


Whelve

by Auchen



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Police, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-08-07 08:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 119,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7707637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auchen/pseuds/Auchen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are instantly sour between experienced homicide detective Raymond Reddington and the unit's newest recruit, Elizabeth Keen. He resents being partnered with someone so new and inexperienced, and she dislikes his constant sarcastic remarks and uncooperative attitude. When they're given a routine case that rapidly turns strange, they learn that they must at least be able to tolerate each other in order to solve the murder. However, as they work closely together, their toleration gives way to mutual respect and perhaps something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One day I was just looking at a gifset of Red and Liz in their police uniforms in The Troll Farmer and this whole AU suddenly exploded in my mind. Oopsies. I have no self control. Enjoy!

**_whelve_ ** (v.) to bury something deep; to hide.

* * *

 

There was nothing quite like being assigned a new partner to begin Red’s day in a less that spectacular fashion, and there was nothing quite like being assigned a brand new, sunny-faced homicide detective as that partner to make his day even less stellar. He’d been through the same routine almost more times than he could count. By this time, it was like preforming some old, tired script from a play that he’d been in for far too many years. He knew all the lines and stage directions, but he took no pleasure from it. He only did it out of duty.

The faces of his previous partners blurred behind his eyes—names and features that he couldn’t be bothered to remember or that he didn’t want to remember. As he continued down the hallway, he could feel the weighted glances against him, eagerly waiting for his meeting with the new recruit to be over so that some new batch of gossip could be spread through the department to distract from the twin, paradoxical natures of the job—banality and horror.

He stopped in front of the door to the homicide department and exhaled before entering. In front of the white board containing photographs surrounded by scattered arrows and words stood a young woman, her back to him, dark hair falling across her shoulders. He’d known that his new partner was a young woman, but when Cooper began to go on and on about her good track record, bachelor's degree in criminal psychology, and top marks in her three years as a patrol officer, he’d declined to hear anything further. The same could be said of all of the new homicide recruits in the past—otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten a position as a homicide detective. Hearing the same generic, rote qualifications told him nothing about what they would be like in the field or in the interview room when procuring a confession hinged on saying just the right words and making the right expression. There was far more to working in homicide than having some nice, high numbers on a piece of paper.

The woman seemed so absorbed in the white board that she didn’t notice when he stepped up beside her. “If you in lean much closer, you’ll end up rubbing off half off the notes with your nose,” he said.

Her shoulders jerked and at words, and she spun around on heel, eyes wide for a moment as they swiped across his face. As she did so, he seized the moment to take her in. Well, for one thing, she wasn’t _unattractive_ —what with those high cheekbones and and dark, intense brows shadowed by the sweep of her hair. However comeliness was hardly the most important thing when it came to her new duties as a detective. Though he supposed that she could at least use her looks to coerce a vital information from a suspect.

Whatever she thought of his appearance didn’t show on her face, for her features soon shifted into tight professionalism as she jutted her hand forward to him. “Hello, Reddington. I’m—”

He ignored her hand and walked away from her, leaving her standing as he pulled out the chair behind his desk and sank into it. “Elizabeth Keen. I know. My _new partner_ ," he said with false sweetness.

True, she’d done nothing to outwardly raise his ire, but he resented being saddled with a rookie and being distracted by training her and keeping her in line when he had duties that were more important.

“Is something wrong?” She raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms.

“A great many things, Keen. For one, do you know that the coffee maker is broken once again?” Red shook his head and rolled his eyes. “The maintenance man is going to have hell to pay when a herd of under caffeinated cops come pounding at his door wondering where their morning fix is.”

Her mouth parted, and she blinked with the shake of her head as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying. “Okay, no. Obviously the problem is me. There’s no other reason you would be acting this way.”

“Oh, of _course_ not.” He pressed a hand to his chest, feigning shock. “I’m simply horrified at how under maintained our office equipment is. If I’m bothered by you at all, it’s that you don’t seem suitably distressed by this plight.”

Elizabeth walked toward him, arms still clamped across her chest, and she bent down over him where he sat lounging in his chair, her hair falling off her shoulders and fanning around her head. He tilted his head up to her with a smile.

“Listen, I’ve heard what they’ve said about you—”

“All _glowing_ things, I hope.”

Her chest rose, but she kept her composure. “The reviews were certainly mixed. I’m not scared of you or your reputation, okay?”

At that, a little, breathy laugh exploded out of him. The first day he’d been partnered with Donald he’d said something similar, and the past five years of their partnership had proceeded in much the same vein from that day forward. He dearly hoped that she wasn’t going to essentially be a female version of Donald. He didn't think he could take half decade of such insipid moralizing.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. One wouldn’t want you being paralyzed by awe. Now then,” he reached over to one of the many paper clipped stacks of paper littering his desk and thrust it out to her, “you can do these.”

She just stared at the pile of papers in his hands. He shook the stack at her and frowned. Maybe she didn’t think that sheaves of paperwork were as important as going out and investigating, but she needed to learn early on that a good percentage of detective work was plowing through pages and pages of reports until one’s eyes burned and head pounded.

“I think you’ll find these quite important if you give them a brief glance with your youthful gaze. You see, my poor, aged eyes aren’t what they used to be. I presume you don’t want your partner going blind on the first day of the job.” He rattled the papers again, and they whispered together.

She darted out a hand and snatched them from him, the skin near her nose wrinkled like a dog that was about to snarl, but hadn’t yet committed to full aggression. “Fine.”

He pressed his hands against the arms of the chair and launched himself up. “Excellent. Well, I have somewhere rather important to be right now.” He tapped his finger against the top of the papers and grinned at her twitching face. “Enjoy.”

The look she shot him before walking out the door could have flayed him.

* * *

The only consolation about being buried in a pile of paperwork was that she was sitting in Reddington’s chair and she had completely readjusted it. If he wasn’t going to be civil or cooperative, then she didn’t owe him anything in return. The only debts she had was to her new position in doing the best that she could, even if she was only doing paperwork.

As she tapped at her laptop, glancing down every so often at the paper that contained witness statements, she let out yet another sigh. She had been under no illusions that working with Reddington would be easy. Though she hadn’t met him in person until that day, he was infamous, tales of his exploits trickling down even into the fringes of the patrol officers.

Reddington was something of a department legend—built up to larger than life status like some kind of mythic creature. And like a mythic creature, the opinions on what he was like wildly varied. Some said that he was callous and hard, impossible to know, and not someone that you would want to know anyway. Others said that he was bright and convivial, although undeniably strange and eccentric. Before she had met him and he had simply been a whispered, almost fictional persona, Liz believed that the truth of whatever he was lay somewhere between the two extremes. But now that she had met him, she was more inclined to believe that he was a cynical, aging detective whose only defense mechanisms were his wit and ability to push around those less experienced than himself. If it were another man, Liz might have assumed that his dislike of her perhaps stemmed from some unconscious, sexist disdain for a someone as well known and as experienced as himself being partnered with a young woman who was new to the homicide unit.

However, she thought that Reddington simply disliked everyone equally, and if he had anything personal against her, it was likely the fact that he believed his star was fading in the wake of a newer, younger generation of detectives. Of course, that was all speculation on her part. She hadn’t gathered enough information on him to know if any of her analysis was solid, but at the very least she was putting her four years of a criminal psychology degree to use while she mindlessly typed up a narrative report. The longer she typed, the less her keystrokes were gentle and soft taps against the keyboard, and the more they became the rapid hammering of the tips of her nails on the keys.

By the time a shadow fell against her screen, she was all but stabbing the keyboard, a pen between her teeth. She swiveled around in the chair, tips of her shoes pressed down into the carpet so she didn’t spin in a full circle. Her shoulders were almost beneath her ears as she was ready to go on the defensive if Reddington had come back to jab at her again.

But that wasn’t who was standing in front of her. Rather it was a stranger that was staring down at her—a young, blond detective somewhere in his thirties with a jaw strong enough that it looked like it would bruise the hand of any criminal that tried to punch it. Liz slipped the pen out of her mouth and tossed it behind her, where she heard it clatter and roll across the desk, only to smack against the floor.

“Good to see Reddington is putting his partner to some use,” the man said.

It might have been a joke, but her earlier exchange with Reddington had put her on edge and had plunged her into a black mood. “Unless you need something important, I can’t talk. I have things to do.” She waved a hand and the screen half-filled with tiny letters.

She was about to whirl back to the laptop and continue typing when the young detective held up his hands. “Hey, I understand. He had me doing the same thing the day I was first partnered up with him.”

“…You’re Donald Ressler. I heard the stories.” Mostly, the stories weren’t about Ressler himself. They were about Reddington, of course, and Ressler was merely a side character in their adventures. Typically, he’d been cast as the stiff, do-gooder sort that always stood in the way of his partner’s occasionally questionable ethics and methods.

While Liz wasn’t the sort of person to pull out the police handbook every time some did something questionable, she considered herself to be fairly moral, and even then she tended to be put off by the overly self righteous people. However, she was willing to let her first impression of Ressler go in the face of being presented with someone to commiserate with.

“Yeah, if Reddington was the one that spread them, you have to take them with a grain of salt.” He rolled his eyes.

“He probably spreads half of the stories about himself. He seems like he has a massive ego.” She reached out a hand and closed the laptop for a moment.

“You don’t know the half of it.” The look in Ressler’s eyes said that he’d seen five years too long of that ego.

“I’m sure I’ll see more than half of it before the day is even over,” Liz said, leaning her elbow against one arm of the chair and dropping her chin into her hand. She moved one leg back and forth.

“Well, I’ve got something I need to do, but if you need help or if you just need to get away from Reddington for a while, my partner Samar and I sit over there.” He jerked his chin to a long desk across the room where a woman with dark, curled hair sat, her head bent over an open file.

“Thanks.” She flashed him a quick smile. “I’ll probably take you up on that sometime—”

But before she could finish, her space was invaded by yet another presence, his broad shadow washing across the desk. Reddington stood between her and Ressler, smiling as he glanced back and forth at them. Ressler’s face had grown stiff, one muscle in his jaw flexing.

“Ah, Donald, how _very_ unpleasant it is to see you again. Are you suffering from a bout of separation anxiety and you’ve come over to my desk to fall on your knees and beg me to get Cooper reinstate you as my partner and hand Keen off to Navabi?” He turned one shoulder away from her to turn that thin, smug smile on Ressler.

“Actually, I was just saying hello to Keen because you _weren’t_ at your desk. Good-bye, Reddington.” Ressler gave a jerking nod and headed back toward his own desk.

“Ah, isn’t he delightful? All the charm and grace of wood cork.” He began shuffling a pile of papers next to the one she was working on. “Now then, please relinquish my seat.”

“Excuse me?” She stopped jostling her leg and pressed an index finger to her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Cooper didn’t tell me that you have a hearing impairment. I will be sure to make accommodations for that. But, as I said, please move. That’s my seat, and I need it. There’s an extra chair over there you can take. It was Donald’s, and before that it was—what was his name? Gosh, I can _never_ remember—”

The air was filled with a thump as she kicked up from the chair and was standing in a moment. The chair rolled forward a few inches from the outburst and bumped against Reddington’s knees. He paused, fingers pinched around a pair of wire-frame reading glasses he had pulled out of his jacket pocket. Despite herself, scarlet blotched her cheeks and the edge of her mouth twitched, one hand clenching and unclenching behind her back. He pressed one side of his mouth together, the other side open as he waited for her to say something.

But she just grabbed her laptop and shoved it under her armpit, marched to the other side of the desk and dragged the chair as far away from him as possible.


	2. Chapter 2

Liz shoved through the doors with one shoulder, fist around the strap of her bag. She felt as if she was dragging a storm along behind her, her foul mood showering on anyone she passed. More optimistic people would’ve told her that it was a new day, and with the opportunity of a new day, there was always the opportunity to make it better than the last. However, her inner belief system didn’t swing toward the relentlessly cheery and, in her eyes, frankly ignorant. The second day on a new job could often be worse than the first. But if anything, the possibility of a worse day only made her all the more determined to continue standing her ground when it came to Reddington. She wasn’t about to let herself be relegated to little more than an office assistant that obediently filed reports while her partner went out onto the streets of D.C. to hunt down murderers and leads.

She swept down the hallway, head lifted and chin set, shoes pounding out her own rhythm. Once or twice someone she had worked with as an officer paused and flicked a hand in her direction, giving her a wide smile. She responded with a nod and a half-hearted wave. She hadn’t ever made any close friends back then, but she hadn’t made any real enemies either. So when her fellow uniformed officers had heard that she was going to be promoted to homicide detective, something in their eyes flickered, and the filter through which some of them saw her changed. She was no longer just a former co-worker. She was now something to aspire to—an example to point to and say, _Yeah, I worked with Keen a year ago, and she made detective. If I keep getting marks as high as I do, maybe I’ll get there too. At the very least, maybe I’ll get on the narcotics unit._ Or she could also now be viewed as an object of scorn, someone who didn’t deserve the position that she’d gotten, not when there were other people that had been patrol officers for longer who believed that they had worked harder.

She turned at a corridor and started down the hallway that lead to the homicide unit. She would’ve simply continued, plunging through to face another round with Reddington if a conversation floating above a flock of three detectives hadn’t caught her attention. With one hand, she shifted her hand along the strap of her bag and pressed a shoulder to the wall, listening for a moment.

“ _Nine months_?” a man with gray flecking his temples said, jaw hanging open. “I bet forty bucks she lasts five months, tops.”

A woman with short hair and a round face shook her head, the wide collar of her jacket fanning out behind her neck like a crest. “Nah, nah, man. Listen, that Keen girl is a fighter. I’m pretty sure she can last nine months.”

“Fine, it’ll be _your_ loss when she—”

“I bet she can last at least as long as Ressler did,” Liz said, stepping up next to the group.

None of them looked up for a moment, but all their eyebrows raised. A man that looked familiar—she thought he worked in missing persons—almost choked on the coffee he was drinking. “That’s crazy. _Five_ years? That girl can’t—”

When his eyes landed on her his fingers tightened around the styrofoam Starbucks cup, and the two other detectives finally turned around to see what had made him stop talking. Liz tilted her head and raised her hand, wiggling her fingers at them, then turned away, their gazes boring into her back between her shoulder blades. Even if the rest of the day was eight to twelve hours of hell, the shameful looks the group had almost made it all worth it.

* * *

Before walking up to the desk, she straightened her spine and squared her shoulders, exhaling between her parted lips. Reddington sat back in his chair, his head turned away from her as he held the desk phone between his shoulder and his cheek. She hoped to be able to walk up without him noticing her, but as she approached the chair swiveled and he watched her beneath hooded eyes, lowering his shoulder, squinting as the voice on the other end of the line began to shout into his ear. She held his gaze and crossed her legs, leaning back against the edge of the desk.

“Didn’t you use to work on civil lawsuits?” he asked the caller, his voice smooth. “I didn’t realize that such lawsuits required so much shouting, especially with the word ‘civil’ in the title.”

The caller seemed to take the hint, and the yelling ceased, the voice now only a faint mumble. Reddington picked up a pen and began to tap it against his chin. He glanced over at the ratty chair that was now hers and nodded, but she didn’t make a move to sit in it. He shrugged at her as if to say, _Suit yourself_.

“I think my mind is still quite sharp these days, so I believe that I’m correct when I say that _you’re_ the criminal prosecutor whose job it is to use the evidence against her, not us. But perhaps the job description of your position was edited when I wasn’t looking. They do that quite often nowadays, don’t they?” he chuckled, and the voice on the phone was about to continue, but Reddington wasn’t going to let him.

“We almost broke our backs—me, almost literally—building a solid case against her, so if you want to blame anyone, perhaps you should blame her for being so damn sneaky and careful. But I know it is so very comforting to shift the blame, so feel free to do whatever you need to feel serene and set your mind at ease.”

The voice buzzed and grumbled. Reddington tossed the pen back onto the desk and clapped his hands together. “Ah, excellent. I’ll see you in court in half an hour, then. Make sure to pop those little hypertension pills before coming—this case will make you want to claw your eyes out within fifteen minutes. I wouldn’t want to see you drop dead in the middle of making an eloquent closing argument. Though, a suppose it would be a memorable way to end one’s career.”

He placed the phone back into its cradle with a click, the black cord coiling up on itself and then stood, pulling his jacket off the back of the chair and shaking it out to remove the wrinkles, fabric snapping together. “I’m going to be testifying in court today, so we won’t be seeing much of each other. Donald and Samar are working on a rather big case involving a series of mysterious stranglings, and they need all the help they can get, so I’ve arranged for you to man the tip line for them until I return.”

He shoved his arm into one sleeve of the jacket with one single, seamless jab. She pushed herself off the back of the desk with her palms and stalked toward him as he finished putting on the jacket. “The tip line? You couldn’t have gotten one of the uniforms to do that?”

“I’m sorry, is this _beneath_ you now that you’ve graduated to being a detective rather than a lowly little officer?” his voice, normally light and smooth, had become sharper, something verging into real irritation rather than the thin veneer of disdain that he seemed to always wear.

“No, it’s not. I just—”

“Good!” Reddington patted her on the shoulder, and she jerked away from his touch, lip curling. “I believe that you know where their desk is.”

As if on cue, one of the phones sitting at Ressler and Navabi’s work station began to howl, red light blinking on the cradle, another piece of noise added to the buzzing clamor of the department. Reddington pursed his lips and tilted his head toward the whining phone. “You’d best hurry,” he said.

Liz held his eyes for another moment, him giving her a little smile all the while, bobbing his head toward the phone. What she was doing was childish, she knew, but every stubborn part of her wanted to refuse his directions outright and continue just standing there. But she had to pick her battles, and this moment wasn’t going to help her win. This particular round between them was going to be drawn out and put on hold until he came back from the courthouse.

She whirled on heel and rushed toward the phone, weaving in and out between desks and detectives that dotted the open office until the came to the desk she was looking for. She grabbed the phone mid-ring, clearing her throat before speaking. “MPD homicide department—how can we help you?”

* * *

The case was apparently a fairly new one, the images of the strangled victims’ broken and bruised necks pressed onto the retinas of civilians who had watched the news. Liz had envisioned sitting at the desk, staring at the phone, trying to will it to ring, but she didn’t have to do that at all. It constantly rang out for her attention, red tip line light blinking at her like an emergency beacon.

The MPD didn’t know the identity of the murderer, but based on the evidence, they believed that it was very likely a strong, middle aged man who favored his right hand and tended to target women with artificially dyed hair. Because of such a nebulous description—there had to be thousands of strong middle aged men in the city—, most of the tips sounded vague and unhelpful.

“I was out with my girlfriends last night, and you know, we were coming home from a restaurant. One of my friends--she has blue hair, and there was this guy that we think was following us. He was big and blocky…” said one of the callers.

Liz remained calm and professional, a pen and legal pad sitting in front of her as she asked the caller for as many details as she could provide. The majority of the calls continued in a similar fashion, but there a handful that sounded…troubled, to say the least. With those callers, Liz focused less on the details they could provide and more on speaking in a gentle tone, easing their fears, trying to guide them into a less frantic state of mind. Then she would try to get the little information she could.

She had just dealt with what sounded like an immature, aggravating teenaged male prank caller before Ressler and Navabi had returned. She had managed to contain her anger during the course of the call, but now she was scribbling in the margin on the legal pad, building black lines upon black lines, nip of the pen digging a dent into the paper, ink probably bleeding onto the next page.

“It’s going that well, huh?” Ressler sat down in a chair next to her and she stopped scribbling.

“Maybe three of the tips were anything of actual _substance_.” She flopped back, sagging as the chair tilted back against her weight.

Navabi took a third chair on the opposite side of the desk, looking down at Liz’s cramped notes. “I’m sure you did the best you could,” she said. “We’ve had very little to work on, so anything helps.”

“Even someone claiming that the murderer is actually the specter of their dead, estrange uncle is helpful?” Liz flipped to the page where she had taken notes on that. She’d doodled a tiny ghost in the margin, a sinuous, wispy shape with hollow, black drooping eyes that seemed to almost be melting, and a wide, yawning mouth that silently moaned up from the yellow, lined paper.

Navabi gave a soft laugh. “Well, no, probably not that.”

“That’s a lot less worse than the guy that insisted he was the killer. He was probably five four and underweight. There’s no way it could’ve been him, but we obviously had to check him out. We wasted _a week_ on him,” Ressler said, his gray eyes turning into two flecks of ice.

Navabi frowned at her partner’s tone. “You know he was somewhat unstable.”

“That still doesn’t excuse what he did. He could’ve gotten himself jailed while the real murderer would still be out there, even more emboldened by thinking that the public’s attention was off of him.” Even though none of what he described had happened, his shoulders turned ridgid under his suit jacket, his jaw tight. Navabi’s frown deepened.

Liz glanced back down at her notes. She felt like an intruder on a deeply personal, private spat that she had no stakes in and no right to witness.

“Hey, I’m pretty hungry, so I’m going to go call for some food. I can get some for you guys too if you want.” She started digging into her pocket for the cell phone. It was a feeble excuse to get away from the intimate argument, but she _was_ hungry.

“I don’t know about Ressler, but I could use some lunch. Thank you, Elizabeth,” said Navabi, her frown ghosting into a smile.

“Okay, great!” She rose from the seat, phone clutched in her hand, when the desk phone began to squeal again, tip line light blinking desperately like an eye convulsively twitching open and shut.

Just as she was about to reach for it, Navabi laid a hand over the phone and shook her head. She picked it up, cord growing taut as she pulled it almost across the entire length of the desk. “MPD Strangler Case tip line.”

Well, at least _someone_ wasn’t acting as if she was little more than a barely tolerable nuisance.

* * *

 

As the day grew long and the denizens of DC settled into heir work day, the tip line fell quieter, the frantic red light only flickering every so often, and Liz began to let it ring for several seconds before answering it, the afternoon lull seeping into the tips of her fingers, making them slow and heavy. She, Ressler, and Navabi sat with cartons of Thai food spread across the desk, unused sheets of printer paper placed beneath the cartons to absorb any grease or to catch any flecks of food that fell as they scribbled down leads and launched themselves at the phone.

The three of them occasionally talked, but silences stretched out thick between them—the quiet awkward quiet between people that weren’t quite strangers but weren’t quite friends, leaving them in an on odd twilight zone of conversations dead before they had ever been spoken. Liz was leaning back in her chair, scraping at the sides of her carton with a plastic fork to coax scraps of a spring roll to the mouth of the container when the door to the homicide unit slammed shut.

She turned in her chair to watch Reddington approach, jacket slung over one arm, fedora pressed over his head, hips swinging. She let out a soft snort through her nostrils. Considering his appearance, he probably considered himself some sort of grizzled detective that had slouched out of the black and white wash of a Humphrey Bogart film—all cynicism and swagger, good intentions misdirected by the needle of a broken moral compass.

“Here we go,” Ressler said behind her, voice weary. She didn’t know if he was referring to the torrent of sarcasm that was about to be visited upon them, or if he was talking about the inevitable argument that would come between her and her partner.

When Reddington made it over to them, he laid one palm against the top of her chair, and it tilted back an inch under the press of his arm. He flicked a free finger through the legal pad that sat next to her, pages ruffling and blurring, pen doodles dancing.

“I see the citizens frightened by the mean streets of DC have kept you busy.” He rubbed the tip of his thumb over the edge of the page that she was on, smoothing out a turned over corner.

She balanced the last of the spring roll on her fork and ate it before speaking. “They sure did.”

“Mmm.” He tapped his finger against her notes. “Good.”

He turned on his heel, about to head back to his desk— _their_ desk—, but she wrapped a hand around his wrist before he could, fingers a vice around his jacket. The fabric was less rough than she imagined, fibers sliding against her skin without making it prickle and scratch.

“We need to talk,” she said, trying to keep her voice firm and professional.

His nostrils twitched as if he could smell the rank odor of anger. “All right,” he said, tone bright.

Liz let go of his wrist and followed him to the empty break room, door hissing closed, as if all the air had been sucked out behind them. He leaned back against the counter, body tilted and arms crossed. His lips were pressed to one side, head shaking at her.

“ _Well_?”

“Well,” she said, voice suddenly harsher now that there wasn’t an audience, “I’ll cut straight to it—you can’t keep doing this. You can’t just keep putting me on paper work or on phone duty. I’m not your secretary, I’m your partner.”

“Keen, manning the tip line is a perfectly reasonable task, especially when I’m testifying for a case you know nothing about. You were doing something useful.” He shifted, arms uncrossing, palms pressed back against the edge of the counter.

“Yeah, but I can tell you're going to keep pulling this, and it’s not gonna fly. You get this straight Reddington, we are working together. As equals. I’m not going to keep obediently doing whatever you tell me to do. I had the detective training and evaluation. I’m ready for this.” She took several steps closer to him, finger jabbing in the air. She had been planning this conversation in her head while he’d been gone, and she’d wanted it to be quieter, more restrained. She’d wanted to show that she was capable of arguing rationally, but it seemed that whenever he appeared, her rationality shrank and was replaced by a deep, fathomless well of exasperation and impatience.

In that moment, something in his eyes changed. His expression had never been kind nor friendly when looking at her before, but at least he’d looked at her with the same sort of bemused distaste that he looked at everyone else with. But now his eyes had shuttered over, the gray and green depths now made of steel and acid.

“November third, 2004 at 2:30 AM a man killed his brother. The room looked like someone dumped a bucket of red paint on the carpet and walls, and the air smelled like a iron. There were pieces of bone and brain on the sledgehammer. The victim—well, his face didn’t look much like a human any more.” He pushed himself off from the back of the counter, body stiff and controlled as he stepped towards her. Something spiked through the pit of her stomach, the back of one heel sliding against the slick, tiled floor. But she stayed where she was, even as he moved ever closer.

“Do you think you’re ready for that, Keen? Are you ready to see the profoundest evils that humanity is capable of? Can you sit next to a single mother whose only daughter was killed by a strung out junkie for little more than two twenty dollar bills? That’s what you’re going to see, Keen. No training can prepare you for that.” Now they only stood inches apart, her face burning with his accusations and with the heat of his breath.

All the time he had been speaking, something tight had coiled up in her chest, and now it was ready to strike. Beneath the sleeve of her top, she scratched at her wrist and palm, fingers digging at the shiny, red mass of scarred flesh. “I’ve been dealing with death and corpses since I was young, so don’t think you can tell me what I can and can’t handle, _Reddington_ ,” she said, his name hissed out between her teeth.

It wasn’t the sort of thing she’d normally tell people, least of all someone she barely knew and disliked. But parts of her past were a weapon, and in this circling, sharp, vicious dance with Reddington, anything she had in her arsenal was fair game, even references to her past that made some dull and distant part of her ache.

She kept her eyes locked on his face, waiting to see if the thrust of her words had any impact on him at all. His face remained still, but for the twitch of a muscle beneath one eye. Even though it was something of a victory, she didn’t feel like smiling. The entire argument had left her feeling drained, her tongue limp and sagging, no ammunition left for their war of words.

“I should go back to help Ressler and Navabi. Goodnight, Reddington.”

Once her back was to him she wrapped her arms around herself and shoved the door closed, leaving him behind in the glass cage of the break room.

* * *

_I’ve been dealing with death and corpses since I was young._

The words echoed and rattled in his mind even after the tip line had stopped ringing and she’d left, leaving him to sit at his desk and shift through a pile of paperwork. He hadn’t warned her about the grisly work of a homicide detective to frighten her out of her position and make her switch to something less harrowing. She was far too determined and stubborn to do that. And if that’s the career she really wanted, he wasn’t about to stop her.

No, he’d done it out of mercy and duty. True, he still didn’t want to have an inexperienced detective as a partner, but neither would he take any sort of pleasure in seeing her go pale and numb in the face of a murder scene without any sort of preparation for it. He had to say _something_  in the face of her over confidence. The impact of death was something that they all went through at one point or another, though they all reacted to it differently. But there was no getting around the initial shock of being faced with death in the form of a glassy eyed corpse with a bullet in its chest. Up until that point, death was simply just a distant concept—something that would happen to everyone one day, but no one really ever truly understood what death was until faced with a human body. Death wasn’t graveside mourning and flowers, sympathy cards and tears. It was cold skin and waxy faces, stiff muscles and decay. It was the hollow people left behind when their loved one’s bones were six feet under the earth.

He first had some understanding of what death was when he’d been a child and he’d come across a dead robin in the grass, wings outstretched in rigor mortis, eyes covered in a strange, gray film, a black line of ants crawling over its chest. There was something about seeing a creature that should’ve been soaring in the sky lying on the ground--small and empty, a feast for insects—,that made him understand death more than if he had simply seen a mouse killed by a cat.

But there was a vast difference between coming across a dead animal and a dead person when you were a child.

That was why Elizabeth’s words kept circling in his brain as he squinted down at the paperwork, black night spilling in through the windows as the light from his desk lamp tried to slash through the darkness. Red shoved the papers back into the file and leaned his head back, palms braced against the arm rests.

He needed to understand the person that he was working with. If their conversation that night had made him understand anything, it was that. He’d simply been viewing her as a generic overeager rookie up until that moment. And she still might prove to be ineffective, but if he was to understand how to deal with her in any capacity, ineffective or not, he needed to know her.

That was what Red told himself as he left his chair and exited the homicide department and headed to where all the employee files were kept. Was it intrusive? Perhaps. But he wasn’t about to do anything malicious with the information. As he pushed open the door of the employee file room, shadows crept up from the corners, dragging long and crooked, turning the room almost into a cave, the only light in it coming from the dim overhead light above that needed to be replaced. He scanned the cabinet unit he found the filing drawer labeled F-K. He dragged the full length of it open and stood over the top of it, fingers flicking through the folders until he found a tab with the name “Keen” scribbled on it in boxy handwriting.

He slipped it out from between the other folders, hands tight around the edges of it. He stared at the blank, beige cover of the file before flipping it open. The first pages contained reports on her performance in the last three years as an officer, and the ones after that were similar, except they were reports about her performance during training as detective. But finally, at the back of the folder, he came to what he was looking for. It was a simple one page paper containing the scantest information about her background—name birth date, parents, and emergency contacts.

As he skimmed down the page and when he came to the names of her parents (Constantin and Katarina Rostov, he noted. Russian. Her name was decidedly not Russian), the simple word deceased stared up at him. It was a single, bland word, but told him much of what he needed to know. Her only emergency contact was listed as her Sam, her adoptive father.

He was about to slip the background sheet in with the others when another paper shifted. He hadn’t noticed it before, and that was because it was almost an exact copy of the first one. It contained all the background information the other had, deceased parents and all, except that there was a second emergency contact listed—Tom Keen, husband.

His eyes flicked back and forth between the two background sheets. The date on the one he had originally looked at was later than the other one.

Tom wasn’t on it. They were…separated? But no, she didn’t wear a wedding ring. They were divorced, and she’d kept the last name for whatever reason. Perhaps out of convenience so as not to have her name changed on everything, or perhaps as an act of defiance to reclaim the last name of someone that presumably had hurt her. Knowing her temper, it was probably more of the latter.

Deceased parents. A divorce two years into her career as a police officer.

Red thought he was beginning to understand who Elizabeth Keen really was. He shoved the background sheets back into the folder and placed the file back where it belonged and shut the drawer, closing the names back into the darkness of the cabinet.

He returned to his apartment shortly after that, head strange and foggy as streetlights shone like man made stars, each one seeming to pulse as his car flew past them. His jacket felt strange against his back as he walked up the stairs and down the end of the hallway where his apartment lay. Hand heavy against the doorknob, he shoved the key in the lock, wiggling it a bit so that the stubborn tumblers would shift and unlock. As the door swung open his cat, Ernest, slid off the couch and rushed over, rubbing his back against Red’s legs.

Red’s typical routine would’ve consisted of feeding Ernest, pouring himself a glass of scotch, and reading before heading to bed, but his gaze was pulled to the black screen of his computer that sat in the corner. He shouldn’t. He knew what he needed, didn’t he?

Ernest circled his legs and gave a quiet yowl, trailing behind him as Red pressed walked to the computer and pressed himself down into the chair in front of it. He pressed a button on the monitor and the screen lit up, washing the corner of the room in a pale, blue light, burning his eyes in the dim apartment. Ernest scrubbed his cheek against the leg of the desk. Red’s fingers paused against the keyboard.

He never had been good at resisting temptation.

He opened the browser screen and typed in the names of Elizabeth’s parents. 


	3. Chapter 3

He didn’t have to do much serious detective work at all to discover the fate of Elizabeth’s parents. The wonders of the Internet did all that for him when he saw that one of the first search results read, “Remembering the Rostov Fire 10 Years Later”. The link took him to an article posted on a website for a Nebraskan town’s newspaper. Something itched at the back of his mind as he read through the article. He tried to read the details as if he were an objective observer, like he was simply gathering details for a case, but the itch stayed there, telling him this was far different routine research, but he continued pressing through the article.

_“Fires happened before in the community, but this was different,” recalled Jeremy Noonan, one of the firefighters that appeared first on the scene. “There was suspicion of arson. As we would expect in arson, there was intense burning on one area of the floor as opposed to on the ceiling, and among the gas cans that were found in the family’s shed, there was one strange metal one that didn’t match the others.”_

_**Arson.** _

He shifted his shoulder at the memory that rose in his mind—nostrils singed by acrid billows of smoke snaking up around his waist and chest wrapping his body in its warm, opaque coils before a smoldering hunk of wood peeled away from the roof of the building and slammed down onto his back, pressing him to the floor to the floor, grit grinding against his face, ash fluttering down to dust the mop of his hair, nerve endings alive and screaming, his brain in a heaving, animal state of terror, the only thing it could think was, _You’re going to die you’re going to die you have to escape._

As he’d been trapped there, streams of fire gnawed through his clothes to chew at the skin along his back so that the metallic, charcoal scent of his own burning flesh and boiling blood was the only thing that he could smell.

And as he’d lain in that hospital bed half delirious with pain medication, bandaged and wrapped up like meat, back blistered and flaking like some lizard shedding its skin in ragged, thin pieces, the homicide unit told him they hadn’t even caught the anonymous serial arsonist, but they’d found his signature—a homemade metal gas can with a _S_ stamped into the side.

It was entirely possible that the similar can described in the article was nothing but a coincidence. After all, it had happened in Nebraska, and the arsonist he’d been chasing was in D.C., and his injury had occurred well after the Rostov fire. He’d never even heard of the Rostovs until he’d cracked open Elizabeth’s file. But still, that mention of the odd, home-made can made something tight settle in his stomach. The arsonist he’d been after _had_ been responsible for fires in other states.

The raised, bubbling scars along his back pounded, itching and aching beneath the press of his shirt. He leaned away from the chair, pulling his back away from it. He clicked further along in the article, the line of his mouth tight, the jabs of his finger against the computer mouse quick.

_The possibility of arson was investigated, but there was very little to substantiate the claim other than the odd can and strange burning pattern. Other signs of arson such as multiple points of origin for the fire and streamers to guide the fire throughout the house weren’t present. It was not clear exactly what started the fire, but the firefighters at the scene believe that gasoline was the primary cause, as the flames were yellowish white, and thick smoke was present—all signs of a gasoline based fire. It’s not certain whether any of the gas cans in the family’s shed caused the fire, but at least one of the cans was old and leaking, and the shed was used to store everything, including matches._

_The only survivor of the fire was the Rostov’s five year old daughter, Elizabeth. She was the only witness to what happened really happened that night, and she proved unable to provide any information to the police or firefighters about what occurred. Four years later, her adoptive father contacted the police, saying that it seemed she had remembered something and wanted to talk. She said that she remembered a fourth person present at the scene, however, she could not provide descriptions of the person. Police investigated the lead, but were ultimately unable to find anything. Any evidence was four years cold, and the lead even possibly could have been a false childhood memory of a traumatic, chaotic night._

After he reached the end of the article, Red took no time to process the information he had just read. He simply clicked on a link at the bottom of the page that lead him to the newspaper’s archived articles about the fire. Much of the information was the same as what he had just read, though the articles did provide pictures of the ruined house—a charred skeleton of a building barely holding itself together, wood leaning in on itself and sagging, and then, shots of what was left of the interior. There was a burnt sofa, half of it torn away and collapsing into a pile of ash, the carpet of the living room seared, stripes of it burnt away, revealing the wooden base underneath that was smeared with a fine, shimmering sheen of black. There were more shots throughout the house—dishes in the kitchen fallen to the floor and shattered, the splintered heap of a stair railing—, all remnants of a mild, quiet life that had been ravaged by the flickering teeth of a fire. The last photo was that of the only survivor.

It showed tinier version of Elizabeth that was sitting in the back of an ambulance, the black entrance of it looking like a huge, gaping metal mouth ready to swallow her thin, slumped form. A gray shock blanket was draped across her drooping shoulders, most of her dark hair hidden by the folds of it. She stared at the person holding the camera, but her gaze was distant, her blue eyes flat and expressionless like the painted glass eyes that were glued into the heads of taxidermied animals. It was the imitation of a look, but there was no life behind it. It wasn’t like the eyes he’d been seeing the past two days—those eyes that were so easy to read, that let every expression of anger and determination flash across their surface. But they were the same eyes, he knew. And those eyes had watched her own parents burn alive.

He looked at the photo of the hunched, haunted little girl for a long time.

* * *

Liz clutched the papers to her chest as she headed to Ressler and Navabi’s desk the next morning. They were already poring over a pile of statement sheets across opposites sides of the desk, Ressler with an index finger against his cheek, and Navabi balancing an open file on her crossed legs.

She cleared her throat and held her papers in the air. “Hey,” she said, and it took a moment for them to tear their eyes away. “I know I’m not on officially on the strangler case, but it was bothering me how little you guys had on the perpetrator, so I came up with a rough profile for him last night. It’s not as polished as it could be, and you don’t have to use it if you don’t want to, but—”

“We don’t want to,” Ressler said, one finger pressed against his sheet to keep his place. “I don’t put much stock in profiling. There’s no significant evidence showing that profiling is any more effective than other investigative methods. It’s mostly just guess work.”

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms, two fingers pinching the papers. Ressler hadn’t exactly been overtly kind and generous in their previous interactions, but she hadn’t done anything to warrant his snippiness.

“Well, I didn’t tell you that you had to take the profile I made, did you?” She tossed the papers onto the desk where they fanned out across the sheet Ressler was already looking at. His jaw tightened. “Take them or leave them. It’s no problem to me either way, since I’m not the one that has to solve this case.”

Perhaps it was unwise to make the comment and possibly make enemies with someone that could be helpful in the future, but she simmered at the idea of a detective letting a killer go uncaught just because he was a snob when it came to investigative methods. It was like a prisoner slowly, meticulously digging out of jail with a spoon being offered a lock pick and rejecting the pick because tunneling out with a piece of blunt kitchenware was more rewarding.

Ressler opened his mouth to say something else, but Navabi leaned across the desk and swept up the papers, shuffling them and knocking them against the edge of the desk to straighten them out. “We’ve followed all other lines of inquiry. It would be foolish to reject this chance because of your pet peeve with profiling,” she said.

“Fine. But it’ll be your job to go through it since you’re the one that accepted the profile,” he said, and lifted up the statement sheets up to his face, putting a barrier between he and Navabi.

Liz was about to head back to her desk when she saw Reddington approaching the three of them, his jacket a bit more wrinkled that she had seen it before, gaze sweeping across their faces and lingering a moment too long on hers, his eyes flicking back and forth across her face, the corner of his mouth tight before it fell into a thin, lazy smile.

“Good to see you’ve gotten a bit of sense into your brain, Donald. But then, Samar _does_ have a way of getting past a man’s defenses.” One eyebrow twitched as he glanced over at Navabi, who was paging through Liz’s profile.

“It’s not challenging, considering the men in this department don’t have very good defenses to begin with,” Navabi said her expression cool, not looking up. She flicked to the next page with a thumbnail.

It didn’t take a psychology degree to know that there was some sort of history there, despite the fact that Reddington was somewhat known for his meaningless, flirtatious comments.

“Much as I would like to challenge that assertion and explore it with you, I’m afraid Cooper has called Keen and I to have a chat.”

Electricity lanced down her spine. They were barely on their third day as partners, and Cooper already wanted to talk to them? Liz knew they hadn’t exactly been subtle about their arguments, but had they really been so loud and disruptive that the homicide superintendent needed to talk to them about it? She’d seen and heard about plenty of intense, vicious disagreements between partners without any superintendents getting involved.

“Please, don’t make that face. When you do it, you look like Lily Fraser when she was caught cheating in AP biology. And trust me, hers is not a face that you want to imitate. It was constantly pinched and sour looking.” He waved his hand in front of his face, making a circle in the air.

“Fine, let’s just get this over with.” She swept away from the desk, making the pages scattered across it flutter. Ressler spread a his fingers across the sheets, frowning at her.

“Watch out. We don’t want your eyes pecked out by a defensive nesting mother protecting its brood of statement sheets.” Behind her, Reddington waved an arm meant to urge her forward, and she felt the presence of his palm hovering near the middle of her back, but he dropped his hand after a moment.

As she headed down the small hall toward Coopers office, Reddington’s presence was a weight behind her, an invisible tether wrapped around her waist, slowing her down. She wasn’t sure what it was, but when she’d looked up and saw him approaching her, there was a heaviness behind his eyes, his step slower, a bit warier, as he came toward her. The things he said hadn’t changed. They were just as smooth and sarcastic, but the gloss he covered his sentences with seemed a bit thicker that morning, covering up something that he was feeling. Maybe her talk with him last night had meant something. She doubted that their conversation made him see her as an equal, but perhaps it had at least planted the possibility in his mind that she might be useful after all.

Or perhaps he simply hadn’t been able to sleep and was pushing through the foggy haze of sleep deprivation and was watching her more carefully to gauge whether any potential arguments between them were worth putting the effort into. Though the latter was more likely, some hopeful part of herself wanted it to be the former.

As she wrapped her fingers around the doorknob, she felt his eyes against her neck, ghostly and strange.

* * *

“A simple shooting?” Red raised an eyebrow, one leg flung over the other, one arm stretched over the back of the chair.

“Yes. It was called in an hour ago, and everyone else has cases they’re working on. You’ve wrapped up that poising case, so you two are the only ones that are available,” Cooper said, voice measured. He undoubtedly had years of experience dealing with Reddington’s snide remarks.

“Please _do_ correct me if I’m making a wild assumption, but I think you mean that you’re giving us this case because Keen is new, and don’t want her to jeopardize a significantly more weighty case. But again, I of course, could be wrong.” He flicked a hand and shrugged one shoulder. “Though me being wrong is not particularly likely, but it is a statistical possibility.”

Cooper laced his fingers and raised two thumbs, eyes shifting to Liz. “We do want you to have something to work on that isn’t initially difficult, but that’s not just for the department’s benefit, it’s for yours. You understand.”

“I can deal with whatever you put me on. Don’t hold out on giving me something harder because you think I can’t handle it. I can.” She kept her body still and rigid, and she resisted the urge to jut her chin forward. She wanted to seem competent and powerful, but she didn’t want to be seen as a young, petulant idiot.

Cooper shifted, his knuckles bumping against a pen that rolled forward a few inches over the black mat on his desk. “As I said, this is a new murder, and you two are the only ones available. That’s the main reason you’re on this.”

Liz blew a breath out through her nose and Reddington’s head rolled to the side, looking at her from beneath lowered eyelids.

“Okay. I’ll take it,” she said.

* * *

As they slid out of the car, Liz followed behind Reddington, hands shoved deep into his pockets, the outline of his back pressing against his jacket as if the clothing didn’t fit quite right and chafed against his body. There was always some air of control about him, but this was unconscious stiffness—body held uncomfortably because of some mental discomfort. But whatever was troubling him wasn’t her issue unless it made him significantly more difficult to work with that day. Her main concern was analyzing the crime scene to the best of her ability.

They had to park several blocks away from the murder since the victim was somewhat near a block of office buildings, and every available space was taken up by economic, middle class vehicles shoved up bumper to bumper. As she walked along, the office buildings towered up around her, humans piled on top of humans, people trapped up there in their glass towers like slumbering fairy tale characters waiting to be awoken from the dullness of their lives, typing away obediently at computers with ID badges wrapped around their necks proclaiming which company they belonged to and relied on to sustain their way of life.

She never could have survived such a life. She wasn’t built for the vapid corporate world, typing up monthly reports and graphs, preforming the same task and navigating office politics every day until retirement like some kind of existentialist nightmare. She would’ve gone mad, a wild cat collared and caged in a concrete zoo, pacing and gnawing off its own limbs. No, somehow, _this_ —the wandering away from corporate modernity into an alley where a man lay cold and dead—was what she was built for.

When they finally came to the scene, Red hooked two fingers under the yellow stripe of crime scene tape and flicked it up, holding it for her to pass beneath. The plastic of the tape snapped and cracked in the breeze, and Reddington’s face was still, his eyes hidden by the amber sheen of his sunglasses. She nodded at him and bent sideways, ducking under the tape and heading to where several crime scene analysts bent in a circle, and off in a corner two uniformed officers were talking to an office worker in a white shirt, his face pale, the blue of his veins visible beneath his skin like organic marbling, thin, trembling fingers clutching a cigarette that was crumbling and burning to the end.

As she was pausing to take in the scene and the MPD staff swarming like insects drawn to a corpse, Reddington circled around her and headed toward the analysts. Their black, generic jackets with the white letters “MPD” stamped on the backs rendering them all faceless clones performing the same mechanical duty of collecting evidence.

Reddington leaned near one of them that somewhat smaller and wirier than the others. “Well, what’d the name of the poor fellow on the menu this morning, Kaplan?”

The analyst he was speaking to looked up, and Liz saw that it was an older woman with short, graying hair. “Chase Schneider,” she said, holding up his wallet with one hand.

Liz realized that she was standing back, letting Reddington believe exactly what he had about her earlier—that she was incapable of correctly dealing with a murder scene. She clenched a fist, fingernails digging into her palm, as she walked up beside him.

In front of the analysts lay a man perhaps in his thirties, chest pressed to the ground, legs spread out crookedly and arms splayed out as if he had been stepped on by a massive foot. A pool of crimson exploded out from beneath his chest, smeared against the ground, almost invisible against the blacktop if not for the high sun making it shimmer. Chase’s head was tilted to the side, his wide, blank eyes staring at a dented, stained trashcan leaning against the wall of the alley.

Perhaps she should have felt something significant while looking at him, perhaps sympathy for a man who died alone and terrified in an alley. It wasn’t that she didn’t register the tragedy of the event, but she simply felt a still calm while staring at the body, aware that it wasn’t person anymore. It wasn’t whomever Chase Schneider had been, with all his fears and hopes, and little frustrations. It was just his body, made of the same muscles and meat that comprised everyone else.

“How was he killed?” she asked Kaplan.

For the first time, the analyst seemed to notice her. Kaplan’s eyes flicked from Reddington and back to Liz, her gaze considering Liz, though not with the same merciless, scraping scrutiny that Reddington gave her.

“A 9 mm to directly to the heart, probably from a Glock 26. It looks like a mugging that went wrong, since his cash and cards are missing from the wallet.” Kaplan dropped the aforementioned wallet into an evidence bag.

“How long did you get here before we did?” Reddington asked.

“About thirty minutes,” Kaplan said, handing the bag off to one of the other analysts.

“Only thirty minutes, and you’ve already been this thorough?” He glanced toward Liz, shaking his head in wonder. “She is a true artist at cleaning up messes like this. Why, I remember two years ago at the scene of a particularly grisly murder involving all together too many knives and a fork or two, she and her team managed to get the evidence they needed in only an hour. It would’ve taken most teams all morning to get everything.”

Kaplan shrugged, leaning forward and balanced on her toes to inspect the victim’s fingernails with her gloved hands. “I wouldn’t still be here if I wasn’t effective.”

For a moment, Liz felt like she was new at school again, wandering amongst the already established cliques and friendships, trying to understand the language and history between her classmates. Despite Reddington’s infamy, he had been a detective for many years, and various connections with co-workers came with the territory.

“What about that man over there who is, at the moment, attempting to choke on his own cigarette? Did he see anything?” Reddington jutted his chin at the office worker the uniforms had been speaking to. As he’d said, the man was inhaling so hard on his cigarette that his cheeks were sucked in, cheekbones sharp against his skin, making him look like a skull. His red hair fell into his eyes, sagging and sticking to his skin made slick with shock and the heat of the sun.

“Well, you’ll have to talk to the uniforms about that, won’t you, dearie?” Kaplan said, but it wasn’t with malice. It was with familiarity between two people that understood each other and their boundaries.

“I don’t make it a habit of dealing with uniforms this early in the morning unless I’ve consumed a certain amount of alcohol to prepare myself, but I suppose one must make certain sacrifices for the job,” Reddington sighed, eyes drifting closed behind his aviators.

“If it’s that incredibly painful for you, I’ll talk to them. Those two look familiar, and if you’re forgetting, I was a uniform not that long ago,” she said.

“Very well. But I thought you _wanted_ me to forget your lowly, prior uniform status? You’re not being particularly consistent with what you want,” he said. And though the words were similar to the jabs he’d been giving her all week, it almost sounded a bit more rehearsed, as if he said it because it was simply expected of him.

Every part of her wanted to rise to the bait, to fight with him about not turning this into some petty spat when they had actual work to do. But then, she would be a hypocrite if she said that, since spats typically involved two parties. She was going to be the bigger person and swim away from the bait, letting someone else take it if it was so enticing. It was too early in the morning for her to be getting hooks in her mouth.

Liz turned away from him, walking away from the circle of analysts and to the two uniforms, one of whom was looking like she wasn’t quite certain how to keep her witness from falling apart in the middle of giving a statement.

“Hi,” Liz said, her cheeks pushed up by a small smile as she turned to the troubled officer. “Lucy, right? I saw you a few times, but we didn’t talk.”

The female officer’s face loosened as she turned to Liz, but fingers were still tight around pencil the pressed to the notepad she was holding. “Yeah, that’s me. I wish you would have, because then I could have some connection to the famous Elizabeth Keen. You know what all the uniforms are saying about you?”

“I know some of it, but I’m not sure I want to know all of it,” Liz said with a laugh.

“Fair enough. So, I assume you want to know what our witness saw?” Lucy nodded toward the still shaking office worker who was talking to the male uniform.

“Yeah. Did he see anything useful?”

“Not really. He came out around 7:30 this morning for a smoke break. He said he always comes over to this alley for some peace and space away from his co-workers, and he’s never worried about being in an alley because it’s the middle of the day and this part of town isn’t bad. But when he came out this morning, he found the victim and called it in. If he can tell us anything more than that, we’ll probably have to wait for him to calm down,” Lucy said. The witness was now exhaling a cloud of smoke, his gray face disappearing amongst the tobacco generated fog.

“Keen,” came Reddington’s voice back by the body.

Liz closed her eyes, eyes rolling behind her trembling lids as if she was trying to alleviate a headache. “Okay, thanks. Tell me later if he gives you anything else. I need to take care of this.”

She returned to Reddington, mouth open and open finger raised, about to start talking to him then and there, but he took the corner of her arm and guided them away from the scene and toward the mouth of the alley where the crime scene tape was taped between the two brick walls. She tugged her elbow away from his grasp, arms crossed, one hand cupping the place where he had touched her.

“ _What_?” she asked, sharp and meant to pierce.

“What do you think of this murder, Elizabeth?” Reddington was looking down at her, eyes digging into her, as if he believed she wouldn’t speak and he could find out her thoughts if he stared hard enough. The intensity of the look was almost a physical thing that pressed against her, but she didn’t step back.

“You care about my opinion now _and_ you’re trying to be on a first name basis with me?” She wouldn’t have cared if it was any other co-worker calling her by her first name, but coming from the man that was insistent on keeping them distant by continuously using her last name, it was strange. Any deviation in routine for him meant something.

“Last night you told me you could handle this and wanted to be treated as an equal partner. That’s what I’m doing, but I will certainly return to the previous state of our relationship if that’s what you want.” He jerked up his shoulders and shook his head.

She didn’t think that was the only thing going on with him. There was something else under the surface, but it might not even have had anything to do with her at all. With him, there was always something more going on than met the eye. “I can’t say much about it, since we barely just arrived. But…it seems odd for a mugging gone wrong.”

“How so?” he asked, like he was a teacher trying to draw a more thought out question from her. Liz thought he might not believe it was a simple random mugging either, but he was also trying to see good her skills were, and perhaps whether any of her observations matched up with his.

“It’s just…if it was a random mugging, I’d expect the scene to look a lot more chaotic and messy. If the perpetrator just wanted to rob the victim and things went wrong, why aren’t there more signs of a struggle? Schneider was killed with a single shot to the heart. I suppose it’s possible the robber could’ve had prior shooting experience without killing anyone, but it takes some amount of skill and calm to kill someone on the first shot. With a mugging, you’d think there might be multiple shots, or that if there was only one shot, it might’ve not been in a vital place.

It just seems…too clean and orchestrated. If it was just a mugging gone wrong, you could read the killer’s mental state in the evidence, and I’m not reading it as someone shocked by what they did. I’d have to see the evidence after forensics looks at it to give you a more detailed opinion, but that’s what I’ve noticed so far.” As she spoke, she turned her head back to the end of the alley where Kaplan was hunched over Chase, hands going through his pockets.

When she looked back to Reddington, he was nodding, lips pressed together. “It doesn’t seem like a mugging to me either. I’ve seen them before, and they were similar to your description—messy, unplanned. With the amount of calm that this took, I wouldn’t be surprised if the killer had done this before.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised by that either.” What she _was_ surprised about was the fact that she and Reddington were agreeing on something and managing to have a civil conversation. She dragged her incisors along her bottom lip.

“Listen… _Red_ ,” she said, deciding that if he was going to be less formal with her, then she needed to be too, especially with what she was about to propose. “I get that you don’t like me and you think I’m going to be a lousy partner. But do you think we can try to set that aside, at least for this case? We owe it to Chase, and to whoever cared about him. And if not that, we owe it to ourselves to do the best we can and not to get distracted by other things.”

He pressed his mouth to the side, then lifted his eyebrows and nodded. “I think we can try that.” He shifted one of his hands out of his pocket and extended it toward her.

She wrinkled her brow. “You want to shake on it? Isn’t that a bit too formal?”

“I find that handshakes tend to build trust. Something about oxytocin released during physical touch—”

“—encouraging pro-social behavior,” she said almost automatically, remembering what she’d read during her studies.

The edge of his mouth twitched at her interruption. “Exactly.”

“Okay, well then I guess…” she closed the space between them and put her hand in his, noticing that his skin was rough from years of handling firearms. “I guess it’s a deal.”

His fingers curled around hers, her fingers suddenly small under his broad, warm palm. He gave her hand a firm shake. “It’s a deal.”


	4. Chapter 4

This was the first time she’d ever been in a on her way to inform someone that their loved one had been murdered. She pressed a fingernail to the middle of her bottom lip, stating out the car window as Red drove them to nearby Montgomery county in Maryland, where Chase, his wife, and their daughter had been living. Green and black streaked past them, the trees and the road washed of detail by the speed of the car, scenery blending into two muddy, splotched bands of color.

She knew that if she were that one that had to deliver the news, she could do it. She had an awful lot of practice of being on the receiving end of being given terrible news, so Liz thought that she was more than capable of knowing how to tell Chase’s wife, Maggie, about his murder. Still, somehow the thought of showing up on her doorstep made Liz’s nerves vibrate more than showing up to a murder scene did. Murder scenes were sterile and straightforward. Even if the circumstances were chaotic, there were always procedures to follow—simple steps that reduced the tangled, feral explosion that was the killing of another human into something clear cut that could be processed in a matter of hours by gloved hands and the right questions, like an archaeologist going through a bag of bones and gradually laying out a partial skeleton, the map of the human body that he memorized guiding him in finding meaning in a random jumble of bones.

It wasn’t that there weren’t procedures to follow when giving the death notice to the family. There were rules to follow, of course, but no matter what, giving the news always involved high, intense emotions from the next of kin, and a delicate balancing act had to be maintained between comforting the grieving person and getting the right information without the individual completely shutting down.

And besides that, she knew what it would be like for the victim’s next of kin in the After. The waking up in the morning with sunlight tickling the strands of your hair and thinking you’d push up from bed to see your loved one in the doorway, only to be met by an empty door frame, the directionless anger that constantly verged on tipping into deep, heaving sobs, and the staring out the window with your eyes heavy in their sockets, heart a petrified stone, body cold marble, unable to feel anything besides some numb want.

Even if a murder only took one life in the literal sense, in the instant the knife was slashed, the second the bullet cracked through bone and muscle and meat, countless other lives were wrecked, potential futures burned and destroyed, leaving the survivor to wrap themselves in a cocoon and slither out months or years later, emerging as someone similar to their old selves, but now darker and sadder.

At least the MPD had quickly been able to figure out what Chase had lived based on the items left in his wallet. It was some small mercy that Maggie was finding out the day of the murder and not days later, finding out that she’d been believing he was alive and well while, unbeknownst to her, some medical examiner was cutting into her husband.

The car jolted over a bump in the road, a lumpy mass of blacktop where the road had been badly patched. Liz reached for the knob of the radio, head still swimming. She needed something to distract herself, but as she reached for the knob, Red’s eyes slid to her. As sound came on, a pounding, modern song filled the inside of the car, the beat slapping invisible waves against the window, the singer belting out lyrics about neon motel signs and socks pulled up high.

She drummed her hands against her thighs, head turned back to the green-black band that was Maryland. Just as the singer’s voice became vibrant and smoky, the song was abruptly switched off. Her head snapped back over to Red, his hands placed back on the steering wheel, his lower lip jutting out a bit.

“I liked that,” she said, as if that fact was reason enough for him to put the song back on. She knew it wasn’t, but she still somehow felt the need to defend her musical choices.

“I didn’t, and this _was_ my car last I checked.”

Liz leaned her skull back against the headrest, rolling her face away from him. She hadn’t thought that things would suddenly become sunny between them after their little deal, but neither of them seemed to be living up to it very well so far. They’d barely talked once they got into the car, and their first exchange in almost forty-five minutes was a small argument about song choices.

“Okay, so…which one of us is going to give her the news?” She rolled her head back to look at him, cheek pressed to the cool leather.

“I’ll do it,” he said, no hesitation at all.

It was logical, of course. He was the oldest and most experienced between them, but the fact that there had been no contest about it still bothered her. But if they were trying to get along, there was no point in fighting about it, especially since even she admitted that his decision made sense. That didn’t mean there couldn’t be a _discussion_ about it.

“Then what am I going to do?” Liz asked.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, turning the wheel to smoothly curve the car through a bend in the road that hugged the border of a fence. “You will provide backup support if necessary, and will analyze the family’s reactions, especially if they are quite…unpredictable. I also want you to simply watch the wife’s demeanor overall. You did decently at the crime scene with the details you evaluated, so I believe your talents will best be used in these capacities.”

“Wow, that _almost_ sounded like a compliment.” She wasn’t overtly seeking approval from him, but the almost-compliment did make her press her lips together to smother a rising smile. Compliments given by people like him that sugar coated nothing were the most valuable.

“I do hope you’re not going to have a heart attack over it. We already have one dead body on our hands,” Red said, looking in concern at the leather, as if he was imagining her corpse contaminating his car.

“In that scenario, you should probably be more concerned about Cooper and the other detectives being suspicious that you somehow murdered me out of annoyance. We’re the only ones in here after all, and that would give you the weakest alibi in the world.” She gave him an almost-smile.

That got a laugh out of him. It wasn’t much, just a soft exhale of breath as a small smile crossed his face, head shaking. It wasn’t much at all, but in that moment the feeling in the car was like that of the first glint of sunlight against snow, the promise that winter wasn’t going to last forever, that cold and ice weren’t always going to make a home in the marrow of your bones, that one day—maybe not then, maybe not soon—, but one day, spring was going to come, washing the snow away, making everything new.

* * *

“Mrs. Schneider?” Red asked as the door came half-open and revealed a sliver of a woman with her brunette hair pulled back by a hair clip.

Liz stood beside him with her hands clasped in front of her, face neutral and calm, but as she imagined what the woman would face in the next several seconds—denial and grief and rage—, it was hard to keep her face blank.

“Yes…that’s me. Who are you?” Maggie didn’t open the door any further, but Liz could tell that she knew something had happened to her husband. The way she and Red carried themselves spoke of authority and devastating news coming from the lips of complete strangers.

“I’m detective Raymond Reddington,” he said, removing his badge from his jacket pocket, holding it up so she could see the gold glint of the crest. Liz noticed he didn’t immediately say he was from homicide.

She pulled her own badge out. “Detective Elizabeth Keen. Could we come inside to talk to you for a minute?”

Maggie’s fingers tightened around the door for a moment, but then she dipped her head in a nod and pulled the door all the way open. Red stepped inside first and Liz followed, her arms at her sides, feeling as if she was breaking into someone’s house even though she’d been invited in.

Maggie lead them away from the landing and through a small kitchen painted cream with a small, circular table sitting in the middle, a half-drained glass of orange juice sitting next to a half-completed puzzle that had shimmers of the juice staining several of the pieces. On the refrigerator there were several sticky notes pressed on its surface, one or two of them curling up at the bottom, their use probably long since past. In the middle of the fridge door, there was a crayola drawing of a purple dog, the outline shaky and fuzzy, blurred black lines near its tail suggesting wagging. Something twinged inside Liz as her eyes lingered on the drawing and the puzzle.

As she looked away from them, she saw Red lagging several steps Maggie, his head turned to the same items she had been looking at, his mouth tight. His eyes flicked to her and he turned away, following Maggie through the doorway into the the living room.

Maggie sank down into a couch pressed against the wall that sat underneath a window covered with quaint wooden blinds. Red and Liz sat on the couch opposite her, almost a foot of space between them. Liz crossed her legs and wrapped her hands around her kneecap, not pressing her back against the couch cushions.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Maggie asked, cheeks flushed as she sat on the edge of her couch, fingers twisting and untwisting, her index finger dragging along the edge of her wedding ring.

“We have bad news to tell you about your husband,” Red said, his voice slow and gentle.

Maggie’s face went pale, almost matching the color of her husband’s skin when they’d found him that morning. Liz felt irked at herself for the off color thought that skittered through her mind.

“Please, what happened?” Maggie’s voiced stayed almost calm, but she kept rubbing her hands together.

“Your husband was found in an alley in Washington D.C. at 7:30 this morning.” Red pressed his hands together and leaned forward, eyes on her as he spoke. “He was shot in the heart.”

At that, Maggie stopped wringing her hands and she inhaled so hard that the outline of her ribs pressed against her skin.

“Mrs. Schneider, I’m terribly sorry this happened to you. I won’t say I understand what this is like, because I can’t. _No one_ can unless they’ve gone through this. But we’re going to do everything in our power to find your husband’s killer.” He gave his hands a shake. “I _guarantee_ you that.

At first when Red said he would be delivering the news, Liz wasn’t certain how he’d do it. She’d often seen him loud and sarcastic, and in the few moments she’d seen him quieter, he’d still simmered with a combination of anger and bitterness. She pictured him being the blunt sort when it came to death notifications—not cruel, exactly, but not kind either. Simply to the point and business-like. But he hadn’t been. Somehow, even while being plain about what had happened, he managed to be sincere and gentle about it, and none of the sympathy seemed like an act.

Maggie said nothing for a moment, just stared at him as tears built in her eyes until they couldn’t be held back anymore and fell down her face, her body still but for the slow trickle of tears down her cheeks.

“How…” she scrubbed the back of her hand against one cheek, “did it happen?”

Red sighed and lowered his eyes for a moment. “For the moment, we believe it to be a robbery gone wrong. Do you know what he was doing in D.C.?”

She dropped her hands back into her lap. “Chase was a freelance graphic design artist.” She gave a weak smile. “Mostly he worked from home online, but sometimes he would meet clients in person. He had two clients in D.C. that he’d met before, and he told me he was going to meet one of them named Lance Jackson this morning about tweaking the graphics for his app—”

“Mom?” a small voice came from the doorway leading from the kitchen to the living room. All of them glanced back.

A young girl of about eight stood there, cheek pressed against the doorway, eyes wide, one of her feet shuffling back as her gaze fell on Liz and Red. When Liz looked back to Maggie, she’d gone even paler—a frightened ghost in her own house, unable to control anything.

“Evynne, these are the police,” Maggie said, voice light and turned up at the edges. She leaned down, trying to smile for her child, even as the rest of her life was crumbling down around her.

“Are they here because you ran a red light yesterday?” the girl asked, entirely serious.

Maggie gave a loud, high laugh, somewhere between genuine amusement and hysteria. “No, nothing like that. It’s…something a bit more serious than that.” She glanced to Red, pleading for some sort of help in a situation she’d never imagined herself to be in. Liz couldn’t fathom what it would be like to be in Maggie’s position—to be explaining to your young daughter that her father was dead, and you didn’t know why.

“We can tell her here, or we can tell her separately,” Red said, his voice low.

“Do we have to tell her right now?” Maggie pressed her lips together.

Red’s face was unreadable. “It’s your choice, but if you do not tell her now, then many of the things we’re going to have to do in the next few days and weeks during the investigation will be even more confusing and disorienting to her. I do not presume to know how to best parent your child, but in these situations I highly advise telling them the truth and letting them process it.”

Maggie closed her eyes, another tear streaking down her cheek. She bobbed her head on her thin neck. “Okay,” she said, her tone a rasping whispering. She opened her eyes again, eyes still shimmering pools of tears. “Evynne, come here. We need to tell you something, okay? It’s scary, but you need to know.”

Liz glanced back at the girl who wasn’t moving. Her hands were still pressed to the door frame as if she were glued there.

“It’s okay. You can sit next to me while we tell you,” Maggie said, strained, yanked thin between trying to be calm with her daughter and the loss of her husband.

“Can I sit next to her?” Evynne finally said, pointing to Liz. “You said the police protect us,” she further clarified, as if that explained her decision.

“If it’s all right with Detective Keen.” Maggie turned her eyes on Liz, and she felt the sharp, stabbing press of the woman’s grief.

“Of course you can,” Liz said, scooting several inches closer to Red to leave room for the girl. In truth, she wasn’t fully sure about letting Evynne sit near her. She liked children, but there was a vast gulf between interacting with a child in an ordinary setting and in strange, dark circumstances such as this.

Evynne pushed away from the doorway and crawled up onto the couch next to Liz, her side pressed against the arm of the sofa.

Maggie inhaled. “Your father…he was—he was killed by someone bad today after he went to meet with a client. We don’t know who did it, but these detectives are going to find out.”

Liz watched the girl as Maggie translated the news into a somewhat gentler form that would make more sense in a child’s world. But no matter how Maggie said it, no matter how hard she tried, there was no way to give the news in a way what would make complete sense. What sense did it make for your mother and father to be there one moment, loving and kind and all right and alive, and then the next minute, one of them was gone? Things like that didn’t happen in a child’s world. Adults were permanence—maybe your grandfather died, but that was because he was old and had lived a long time, but your _father_ or your _mother_ were there forever. They didn’t leave because some petty criminal decided that money mattered more than your father coming home at night.

When Maggie finished, the girl’s face hadn’t changed, she just stared straight ahead. But after a second, she took Liz’s hand, still staring out at nothing. Evynne’s hand was cold and slick.

Maggie jumped up as something beeped, her pulse dancing in a vein at her throat. One palm slammed down against her pocket, and she dragged out a cell phone. “I’m sorry—I—I have to take this. I’ll be back in just a minute.”

She rushed out of the room, leaving Red, Liz, and Evynne silent on the couch. Liz rubbed her teeth together in the silence stretched tight as a wire, the girl’s fingers like the cold hand of a statue. She imagined what Evvynne felt—

A sudden numbness of unreality as everything was turned upside down, a child’s mind unable to completely process what she had just been told. People thinking you should be shaking, you should be sobbing, and when they didn’t think you were listening, asking each other why you weren’t, asking what was wrong with you, why did you just— _stare and stare and stare while everything was burning, while there was all that heat, while they were all dead and you watched it happen—_

_—why didn't she cry? Why doesn't she feel anything? Did something break inside of her?_

And then the crying did come, but it came weeks later out of nowhere, just eating breakfast and coloring, you felt sad all of a sudden, as if something inside of you had shattered and cracked straight across, and all those tears came out, and you couldn’t stop crying, not even after your throat was tight and sore and your tongue was like dry, not even after your adoptive father came home and tried to hug you and you tried to shove him away, smacking a hand against his chest, because his cologne didn't smell right, because he didn't shave like your father did, because he didn't know how to make scrambled eggs right--

Liz flinched when Evynne’s stone hand traced the jagged, lightning-bolt outline of her scar, head tipped down as she stared at the ruined flesh. She kept herself from twitching as Evynne rubbed her thumb over one particularly rough spot.

“You know, I got that when I was a little younger than you,” she said, not sure why she was saying it. What happened to her wasn’t something she often brought up. When she _did_ bring up, it was like digging around in an old sore. “When I was a little girl, something bad happened to me.” Evynne's finger paused against her skin.

For a second, her neck prickled, and she was certain that Red was staring at her, the animal instincts of her body reacting to his intense gaze, automatically telling her she was being watched by sharp eyes.

 “There was a fire, and I lost two people I cared about too,” she said. Maybe if Red hadn’t been there, she would’ve said she’d lost her parents. But even if he wasn’t, she didn’t know if she’d have told the whole truth, not even to a child who wouldn’t care. “It was hard. And it might be hard for you too, I don’t know. But whatever you feel, don’t let anyone tell you how you should be reacting. Whatever you’re feeling is right. And maybe later, you’ll have a scar too, but it won’t be like the one I have.” Evynne glanced up at her, all confusion and curiosity at the metaphor. Liz gave a small smile.

“It’ll be a scar on the inside. And one day, the scar won’t be a reminder of the bad thing that happened, it’ll be a reminder that you made it through.” And when she said it, she knew she said it half for herself and half for the girl. Maybe Evynne wouldn’t remember her advice, but it was worth trying.

And it was something she kept telling herself. Maybe if she said it often enough, the scar would become a brand of honor and resilience, not just some reminder that life was cruel and good things could be torn apart in an instant.

As Maggie stepped back into the room, Liz’s skin kept prickling, telling her Red was still watching her. But she couldn’t look up. She didn’t want to see what his expression was. If it was pity, she’d resent it. She wouldn’t want sympathy from someone who didn’t care about her well being and who, just yesterday, had looked at her like little more than office decoration. And if his expression was disgust—well, then, she’d just want to slap him, which wouldn’t be appropriate, given the circumstances.

“I’m sorry, it was from my work. I told them why I’m late, and why I’ll be taking some time off. They understood.” She dragged a hand through her hair, the skin beneath her eyes dark and bruised.

“Mrs. Schneider, may we come by again tomorrow to look at your husband’s things?” Red asked, voice slow as if he was soothing a scared animal.

“Sure. I’ll help you with anything that will solve Chase’s murder,” she said, putting the phone back in her pocket.

“We’ll leave you alone now, then.” Red pressed his hands against his legs and raised himself from the sofa. He pulled a card out of his pocket and held it out to her. “This is a number for the victim support line, but if you personally want to talk to me, I can supply you with my number as well.”

Maggie stared at the paper for a moment, and for a second she looked like her daughter, blank and vacant, mind swimming in some shadow land where nothing made sense. But then she took the paper between two fingers, lips pale as she pressed them together and grabbed Red’s hand before he put it back into his pocket. She shook it firmly. “ _Thank you,_ ” she said, voice close to breaking, any calm that she had gone and spent.

“Of course.” Red flashed her a quick, soft smile—nothing like the sliding, smug smiles that he gave at the office.

Maggie let go of his hand and walked over to where Evyenne still sat next to Liz. “Honey, let’s go somewhere, okay? We can get ice cream if you want. Or if you don’t want to do that we can—well, we can go wherever you want, all right? Let’s have a special day today, jut the two of us.”

Liz rose, the girl’s hand long ago having let go of her scar. She and Red walked away from Maggie who was still talking to Evynne, voice quiet and shaking, a cadence formed by hollow words. Red unlocked the car and she sat down into the passenger’s seat, head thrown to the window again.

“What did you think of Mrs. Schneider?” he asked, any comfort gone from his voice.

Back to business.

Liz didn’t look to him, even though she knew he wouldn’t be thinking about what she’d said to Evyenne. Somehow, she still didn’t want to look at him after that.

“I think she reacted how I would expect a grief stricken wife to act—surprised and sad, and even though she was calm at first, that doesn’t strike me as odd. Plenty of people try to keep their composure in the face of bad news, especially in front of strangers, and especially if they have kids in the house. And she’s willing to be completely cooperative. I mean, sure,” she gave a jerking shrug, “we’ll look into her and her alibi, but I doubt she had any involvement in his murder.”

After a second, she chanced a glance at Red from the edge of her eye. He gave a tiny nod as he started backing up the car. She went back to staring out the window, her eyes fixed on one of the nearby houses that was painted pink, the silhouettes of two people moving back and forth in front of one of the windows, curtains flickering yellow and blue by the light of a television.

They pulled out of the neighborhood and Liz kept watching the houses go by, a pastel rainbow of suburban bliss, all the neighbors unaware that there was a woman just blocks down who was living in a cave of misery.

“You did well,” Red said after several more houses flashed by, blending together into a pink-green smear.

“It wasn’t hard to see that the wife probably isn’t our main suspect,” she said, chin pressed against her palm.

“No, with the daughter. A fair number of detectives I’ve known wouldn’t have known how to handle the situation, or what to say. You did...commendably,” he said, and his tone almost sounded like the gentle way he’d spoken to Maggie. Liz pressed herself closer to the window.

“I like kids,” was all she said.

Perhaps sensing that pressing it wouldn’t be a good idea, he left it at that.

The world turned back into two streaks of black and green bands.


	5. Chapter 5

Liz clutched the coffee cup to her chest like it was the most precious thing in the world to her at the moment. She lifted it to her mouth and took a slow sip from it, savoring the way the bitter liquid kicked at the back of her throat.

She needed something to rattle her awake after her visit to Maggie’s yesterday. All things considered, it had gone standardly. It went well, even. But she supposed she just hadn’t been completely prepared to manage all the factors of the situation. Even if Red thought she had done well, doubts still swirled in her mind, wondering whether what she said to Evynne was right or not, or whether she should have tried to do something to comfort Maggie. Red had done well at that, but she had still felt like a useless piece of set dressing as the woman had broken down in front of them.

Liz tipped the coffee back again, drinking more quickly, her mouth making a sucking noise as she pressed her lips to the cup. Navabi walked in as she was mid-slurp, and Liz lowered the cup and set it down one break room counter, pressing a hand to her mouth.

“Sorry,” she said, rubbing coffee off her chin. “I didn’t expect anyone to come in quite yet.”

Navabi set down her papers on a nearby table and walked over to Liz, putting an empty thermos down near the coffee maker that sat on the counter. “It’s all right. I’ve walked in on worse,” she said, giving a knowing smile.

Liz snorted and returned the smile. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Navabi removed the carafe from the coffee maker and maneuvered around Liz to stand by the sink. She flicked the faucet on. “So, how are you enjoying your new job so far?” Her eyes were lowered to the water collecting the carafe, so it was like she was saying the sentence to the sink itself.

“It’s taking time to settle into,” she said. That was putting it mildly. She had taken everything that had happened to her in the past three days and managed to condense it down to a simple, bland sentence that was a lie and the truth all at once.

“I’ve seen that.” Navabi switched off the counter and made her way back to the coffee maker, managing not to leave even a single droplet of water on the counter. With her slow, easy steps, the water barely trembled in the carafe. “Is Reddington still giving you hell?”

“We’ve sort of come to an agreement,” Liz said, picking her cup again and holding it to her with two hands.

“Mmm,” Navabi hummed as she measured the grounds, eyelids lowered, giving that smile again that said she was implying something or knew more than she was saying. “You don’t let him scare you. That’s good.”

“He can be irritating, but he’s not frightening. And—” She pressed one side of her lips down together, unsure whether to continue. She almost felt like she was betraying something within herself if she admitted Red had any admirable traits at all. “He can be awful, but he’s a good detective.”

“He is.” Navabi bobbed her head. “He helped Ressler and I on a case a while back that had a connection with one he was working on, and he saw things that we hadn’t considered. But,” she finished adding the grounds and closed the lid, “you’re a good detective too. I looked at the profile you wrote up on my serial strangler, and I think it may prove to be helpful, even if Ressler disagrees.”

Liz straightened her back. She _knew_ she was good, so she didn’t want to visibly preen, but after Red’s scathing remarks and assumptions about her, any sort of respect from other homicide detectives was a solace. “There’s a reason Ressler and Reddington were partners for five years, right? They’re both stubborn idiots.”

Navabi gave a thin laugh. “Now you’re really putting your profiling to good use.”

“You’ll be astounded to find that she can put her those selfsame skills to even better use by looking at Schneider’s bank records with me.” He leaned only his neck into the break room, as if fully stepping into it was off limits.

The coffee maker made a rattling, gushing noise and Liz sauntered up to him, slowly dragging her eyes from her coffee and up to his face. “Sure thing. Let’s get to it.”

* * *

They were slouching together over a printout of Chase’s bank records from the week before he died. Their chairs were pushed close together, heads bowed inches apart as she pinched the papers between her palms, flipping the stapled statement over to the next page, lips half-parted.

“All of this looks routine except—”

She saw it the same moment Red pressed a large finger against the paper, an arrow guiding her eyes to a large figure that didn’t match the other, smaller, deposits and withdrawals. “One of these things is not like the other,” he said, almost sing-song.

“A mysterious withdrawal of ten thousand dollars?” She raised an eyebrow. “I doubt that’s standard for someone on a graphic designer’s salary. Still, though, these are only his records from the last few days leading up to his death. We can’t make assumptions about his financial situation without looking further back. There could’ve been other large deposits like this in the past.”

“Mm, _true_. But it’s still interesting considering this.” He slid another piece of paper on top of the one that she was holding, and placed his hand over the new paper, blunt fingernail dragging down the page, making a quiet scratching noise, until it stopped at the next day, showing that ten thousand dollars had been withdrawn. The date showed that the withdrawal had been made the day after the previous one. “This statement is from his credit union, not his bank.”

“Okay, it’s…odd,” she admitted. And it _did_ line up with their suspicion that the murder hadn’t been a simple robbery.

“It certainly is. But _do_ feel free to look through his backlog of financial records if you feel so inclined.” He removed his finger from the page.

“I will.” She wasn’t much looking forward to doing it, but it would be necessary. If his older records showed that strange, large deposits and withdraws frequently showed up, then she would have some clear indication that there was a suspicious pattern occurring, and she could tailor her profile of Chase accordingly. If not, then the withdrawl would be out of character for him. It was all about finding the pattern and fitting it into the larger whole to make a clearer picture.

“Well,” Red stretched and raised himself from his chair, “in the mean time, how interested are you in returning to Maryland?”

“I don’t visit frequently if I can help it,” Liz said. She had nothing against the state, but keeping up some sort of weak rapport with Red felt necessary, even if it felt empty.

They’d been doing decently so far. They’d kept their conversation confined to the case, and though neither of them had been friendly, they had been working as a unit, two seemingly mis-matched parts come together to solve the case. A fragile team, perhaps, but they were no longer circling each other with unsheathed claws and bared teeth, looking for a vulnerable spot in each other’s flanks to tear into.

But bland professionalism only went so far in building team spirit. She had to make some modicum of an effort if she wanted things to be better than strained between them.

“You should really reconsider your opinion, then. The housing prices and traffic is nightmarish, but Marylandians’ creativity when it comes to cooking crab almost makes up for it. Maybe if we have time we can try some while we’re there.”

Getting lunch with your partner wasn’t odd. When you poured hours of your life into a job that required working with someone else, some of those hours inevitably lead to food, and so that food was naturally shared with the person at your side. Still, his obvious offer to take her to lunch was jarring, even though he was likely trying to live up to his end of the deal they had made.

She stood up, folding the bank statements and placing them into an empty folder on the desk. “I’ve never really been a sea food person—”

He hooked his arm into hers and leaned in, his head tilted, giving a curling half smile. “Come now, it’s healthy to broaden your horizons.”

Her arm was a jagged, sharp line against his easy, curving crook of his arm. She pushed her chin out toward him, leaning in like he did, shoulders stiff. “Thanks, but I think I’ll broaden them on my own time when I feel like it. I’m keeping them narrow for now.”

He turned them in the direction of the exit, and she almost stumbled as he pulled her along. He dug his sunglasses out of his pocket and pushed them up the curve of his nose, adjusting them with two fingers and sighed.

“No, that’s not right,” he said, lips pursed, head shaking.

“Well, you’re going to have to tolerate my—”

“No, no. It’s not Marylandians, is it? It’s Marylanders, I think. Or Marylandites?” He raised his head to the ceiling, then made a clicking sound with his mouth. “No, it’s Marylanders.”

She decided that the best response was no response at all.

* * *

It was some consolation that Maggie’s home was located in a residential neighborhood in Germantown, so it didn’t take hours to reach. But that also meant that watching the same scenery go back and forth three times in less than twenty four hours quickly became monotonous. If her house had been somewhere in the middle of Maryland, then at least Liz wouldn’t have become sick of the drive as quickly as she did. But at least that day they weren’t bringing the death notice.

Not that that meant much. Sometimes the second day was worse than the first after the survivors had time for the loss of their loved one to sink in, so Liz’s knock in the door was quieter than she would’ve liked. At least Red didn’t seem annoyed that she was seemingly taking charge. As she glanced at his face, he seemed to be feeling little at all.

As the door came open, Maggie’s pin prick of a pupil stared out from a dark hallway—her face a white moon in the pale gray of the house.

“I believe my partner called ahead?” She nodded at Red. “We’re here to look at your husband’s things.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Maggie said, opening the door wide for them. “Sorry, I’m just a bit out of it, I guess.” She inhaled and rolled her eyes down, smoothing a hand over the wrinkled white T-shirt she was wearing. Her hair shone with unwashed oil, and Liz smelled the faint odor of sweat.

“Just follow me. Chase’s office was just up here.” She lead them down a hallway branching off of the living room and up a flight of stairs.

Liz kept her eyes on the back of Maggie’s bare, cracked heels, Red’s steps barely making any sound behind her. She would’ve expected him to have a louder tread, but the soles only whispered against the wooden steps.

“Where’s Evynne today?” she asked. She hoped it wouldn’t be perceived as an intrusive question, but she wanted Maggie to feel she had an interest in their lives, and not simply as it related to the tragedy. It would help the investigation go as smoothly as possible, but she also _was_ curious.

Maggie came to the top of the stairs and stopped. “Oh,” she said, flicking a light switch with the edge of her hand. “She’s playing with a friend that just got back from summer camp.”

She walked a little farther forward and pushed open the first door at the top of the stairs, and Liz followed her in. She was met with a large window that looked out to the front yard, a long desk pushed up near it, where a computer with two monitors sat, like a twin-headed electronic creature, whose appearance was not due to a genetic anomaly, but which had been conceived by technological minds for multi-tasking efficiently. Various papers were scattered across the desk, some covered in the neat, orderly sentences created by a word processor’s font, and others scribbled with slanting and cramped notes surrounding pen sketches, like the hand of the person that had written them couldn’t quite keep up with his mind.

“Look at whatever you need to. I’ll just be out in the hallway, so call for me if you have a question about anything.” Maggie jerked a thumb toward the door, and as she did, the left sleeve of the T-shirt sagged off her shoulder. The shadows from the room carved a dark black canyon into the dip of her collarbone.

She shuffled out the door.

Liz pulled blue gloves out of her pocket and slipped them on her hands, and as she did, they snapped against her wrists, leaving a stinging circle of pain against them.

Red was already lifting up a paper between two pinched, gloved fingers. He was wearing black, leather gloves as opposed to the disposable blue ones she was wearing. He swung his head around to her, one eyebrow raised. “We’re investigating a victim’s office, not dissecting a frog.”

She wasn’t sure if he was lapsing back into criticism or not, but even if he was, she wasn’t going to be the one to return to their former hostile holding pattern, so she said nothing.

She walked to the opposite side of the desk and picked up a stack of papers, shuffling through them. As she went through the pages and skimmed the notes, most of the sentences seemed to be in indecipherable short hand that would only have made sense to Chase.

She’d done something similar in college. As she’d had a notebook open, hand cramping as her pencil dashed across the lines, she’d developed her own, personal language for note taking. Whenever a friend or classmate asked to look at her notes she obliged, and they almost always became annoyed that trying to read her notes was like trying to read a newly discovered ancient language that had no Rosetta stone to accompany it.

But from what she was able to gather from context, Chase’s notes mostly seemed to be about projects he was working on, not anything relevant to his death. “ _No more MTN for C.S_.”, one note said next to a sketch that might have been a logo. The drawing was of three angled lines that looked like triangles without a bottom with a swooping arrow under it, and a light, penciled X had been drawn through the sketch. Maybe MTN stood for mountain? Perhaps he had been making a logo for a company with “mountain” in their name, or a company located in the Intermountain West.

She shuffled to the next page, and it was much the same, except for a note in the corner that read _“$10,000 for truck”_. She glanced up and saw Red was still looking through the same stack of paper, his sunglasses replaced by a pair of reading glasses she had seen once before. She got the sense that he only used them as a last resort, refusing to admit that the years had weakened him in any way.

“Hey, Red, you might want to look at this.” She waved the paper in the air.

He lowered his pages and one hand hovered over the glasses he wore, but his hand dropped and he walked over, taking the paper out of her hands. She knew when he’d reached the note she’d seen when his eyebrows jumped up. He craned his neck toward the door and finally took the glasses off.

“Mrs. Schneider?” he called.

Maggie came back into the room, bottoms of her sweatpants pooling over her feet. She looked like a woman sleep walking. “Yes?” she asked, almost mumbling.

Red opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Liz cut him off. “We found a paper that said ‘$10,000 for truck’. Do you know what that’s about?”

“Yes, he um, sold his truck last month. On Craigslist. He decided it was a waste of money since he could just get to most places with a bike or public transit, so he sold it.” She was staring at the paper that Red held, like she wanted to grab it away and hold a shred of her husband’s life to her chest. Liz wondered if she had gone into their bedroom held held his clothes to her face, trying to drink in the already fading scent of him.

“You said he was meeting with a client when he was going into D.C. yesterday. Did he bring anything with him?” She kept her eyes steady on Maggie, but she chanced a glance at Red. His face was still, not a twitch or a blink indicating what he thought of her seizing control of the situation.

“His briefcase. He always took it with him when he was going to meet with a client, because used it to take copies of his art to show. He usually kept it over there.” She angled a foot toward the far end of the desk.

If the murder had involved a robbery, it wasn’t completely odd that the briefcase hadn’t been found at the scene. The robber might not have had time to go through it to see if it had money, so he just grabbed it to go through later. But the robber had taken the time to take the money out of the wallet and leave the wallet itself behind. Taking the briefcase could have been an impulsive act, but it also could’ve been a calculated move.

“That’s all I wanted to ask, Mrs. Schneider. Thank you,” she said, giving the woman a smile.

Maggie gave a bob of her head that might have been a nod, a single, greasy strand of hair falling into her eyes. She walked back out of the room, shoving her sleeve back up over her bare shoulder.

Liz and Red went back to their slow, sifting search through the papers. The room was silent, the only sounds coming from the brush of cheap latex and expensive leather drifting across printer paper. The rest of the pages Liz went through were covered with more alien notes and scribbled drawings, but there weren’t any more references to money. After what might have been an hour and a half of bending over the desk, she stood up and pressed a hand to her back, massaging the middle of it as she grimaced.

“We can send a forensic team to look through the rest of this and pull information off his computer,” she said. “I think we’ve probably found about all we’re going to.”

Red was squinting down at a notebook, letting her wonder for a moment if he hadn’t heard her. “Yes, delegating that would most likely be wise,” he said, putting the notebook down and taking a phone out of his pocket. He slipped off one glove and tapped his bare thumb against the screen, and the phone’s camera light flashed over the notebook, then he put the phone back in his pocket.

“All right, then.” He pressed his hands together and smiled. “Lunch time.”

* * *

She pressed a finger to the window, and for a second it looked like her index finger was about to crush the building as it passed by. “Circle back around in half a mile and we can get back there easily,” she said.

Red made a scoffing noise in his throat and looked at her from the corner of his eye, cheek pressed his shoulder as he drifted the car into the next lane. “Elizabeth, we’re _not_ going to _Sizzler_.”

“And why not?” She crossed her arms. It had been his idea to go to lunch, but she wasn’t going to let him forget that there was going to be more than one party present at lunch, and that second party’s opinion needed to be considered.

“Do you have _any_ idea how sub par their steaks are?” And,” he held up a finger, “let’s not mention the shrimp.”

She held up her phone to his finger. “The Yelp reviews for this particular Sizzler are mostly positive. And please don’t go acting like you can afford five star dining on a cop’s salary.”

“If one saves enough and budgets wisely, you’d be _awfully_ surprised what one can do with a cop’s salary.” He shifted away from her and leaned with the movement of the car.

And just like that, she felt that any option of enjoying a salad bar had gone up in smoke. “Fine, but I’m not eating crab today,” she said, and shut her phone off.

* * *

A song that throbbed with everything that had been terrible about the 70s drifted from the speakers above, and she raised an eyebrow as she stared at Red across from her. He was in the middle of unbuttoning his jacket and shrugging it off his shoulders, leaving it in a nest of fabric next to him on the green faux leather seat.

“You know,” she said, voice thin, “this isn’t exactly five star dining.”

“No.” He closed his eyes for a moment and shrugged, tilting his head to the side. “But, unlike Sizzler, it possesses a certain…local flavor and _color_. Sizzler or Arby’s or whatever the hell restaurant you want to mention is the same in every state. Go to Michigan, oh, there you are! The exact same decor and the exact same menu that you could find in Delaware! They’re all clones. You go there for banal familiarity. You go to places like this for an _experience_.”

“It’s the same thing with hotel rooms,” she said. She could’ve tried to argue with him that people liked a piece of home when they were away from their own city, but she valued having a pleasant meal more than a debate about dining establishments. “Every hotel room I’ve been in feels like the same place.”

“Hotel rooms are quite a different beast than generic chain restaurants. There’s something liminal about them. They’re anonymous way stations between destinations, or private spaces to conduct _various_ pieces of business.” And just like that, he’d gone from entirely seriously musing on the merits of Sizzler to looking wistful about hotel rooms.

She shifted her hands in her lap and looked out the window, not sure why she was letting the subject dwindle at that. One person walked by outside and caught her eyes, staring into her before they disappeared.

“You took over the investigation today,” he said, tone serious.

So that’s what all the humor had been about. Creating misdirection and a false sense of ease before lighting in to her about letting the _senior,_ more _experienced_ officer handle all aspects of the case. She turned her head back to him and her hands grew tight.

“Yeah, I did. Do you have a problem with that? Because if you did, I’m pretty sure you would’ve said something about it, or you would’ve taken back control if you thought I was being incompetent. You’re not a person that rolls over and let’s people walk all over you,” she shifted in her seat and crossed her arms, eyes steady with his.

His mouth twitched at the edge, something glinting in his eyes. “Well, Miss Keen, you _are_ quite the astute profiler,” he said, voice deepening. She wanted to look away again, but there was something weak in that, so she held his gaze and tried to return that twitching, almost-smile.

“I don’t think you want me to tell you what I’ve analyzed about your personality,” she said, uncrossing her arms and leaning them against the table.

“On the contrary,” he said, voice still somewhere between honey and a tiger’s growl, “I’m certain I’d be happy to discuss whatever you believe about me. I’m not afraid of gazing inward. Are you, Elizabeth?”

She tapped one finger against her arm, sucking on her bottom teeth. She’d gazed inward before, but she didn’t always like what she’d seen when she’d opened that door. In there, she’d seen cracks and cobwebs, blemishes and warps, so she’d closed the door without looking too closely. If she went too deeply inside, then she’d have to start cataloging all the flaws and would start having to tear into the walls and reconstruct parts of herself.

“No, I’m not.” She gave him the most self-confident smile she could.

“Hm,” was all he said before he perked up like a cat that had seen a mouse. “I believe our food is arriving.”

She’d rarely been happier to see a waitress in her life. The waitress, for her part, seemed to take little notice of Liz. She smiled at Red the whole time she was putting the food down, and Red was seemingly indulging her by smiling right back and using _that_ voice.

Liz had to keep herself from rolling her eyes. If the girl knew how insufferable and irritating he was, Liz doubted that she would keep smiling so widely. But, she did have to admit, it was interesting to see him through the eyes of someone that hadn’t been exposed to his rougher edges. If she had been that girl, it was entirely possible she would’ve been fooled by his charm too. If Liz analyzed patterns of crimes and people’s belongings to construct a profile, Red was a detective of emotions. He could look at a person and with a glance know what they would respond to or what would get under their skin, spinning his words to suit the exact situation.

As she picked at her chicken with a fork, she thought it might have been nice if she and Red only met once as strangers to exchange a grin and a few meaningless looks and words, and they could have moved on without ever having to worry about the complications of being partners. Maybe they would’ve passed each other in the hallway of a hotel—in one of those strange liminal places where nothing was ever real, and when you left, none of what was said mattered—and they would’ve made up some story about what they’d been doing there, and they could’ve drifted away into the night.

But things never were that easy, were they?


	6. Chapter 6

Liz silenced the echo of masculine shouting with the click of her remote. It had been one of the dozen or so lawyer or doctor dramas that littered the TV, and while she idly enjoyed them, attractive people passionately yelling wasn’t exactly conducive to concentrating on bank statements.

She sat down on the couch and curled her legs underneath her as she picked up the paper clipped records from Chase’s bank and credit union from the last few months. She hadn’t joined the homicide unit for a thrill a minute, but that didn’t mean she had to find enjoyment in flicking through months of meaningless deposits and withdrawals. Some detectives surely would’ve found something thrilling in the activity—parsing meaning from strings of numbers driven by the monetary needs and desires of their victim or suspect. Those detectives were probably the kinds of people that liked doing complicated sudoku books and logic problems on a quiet night in. Liz liked puzzles and challenges, and she wouldn’t have gone into criminal psychology of she didn’t. But that dealt with human behaviors and patterns, not sequences of numbers. Besides, for her, a quiet night in involved take out and movie streaming on demand.

Looking through Chase’s financial records was grunt work, plain and simple, no matter how necessary she knew it was. The further she went into the records, the less it appeared that the withdrawals of ten thousand dollars from the last week of his life were standard. Most of his withdrawals were small—the kind of thing she’d expect from a graphic design artist like him. Of course there was nothing definitive to link the ten thousand to his death, but it was still suspicious in light of the suspected robbery. She was about to look for a pencil and paper to take notes with when her phone vibrated on the sofa next to her. She jumped as if she had suddenly been awoken from a deep dream that probably involved neat columns of numbers. She flipped the phone over and text stared up at her, a paper clip symbol indicating something was attached to it.

_This will probably be of interest to you._

_-R_

It took her a moment to realize who had texted her. She didn’t receive texts outside of work very often, not after she had drifted away from her friends after the divorce, but even so, when she saw the _R_ signature, she almost thought it was a message from her old friend Raina that always insisted on signing texts the same way every time, even though she’d been in Liz’s contact list for two years. Come to think of it, she probably still was, even though Liz hadn’t heard from her in over a year. But then she remembered she and Red had exchanged numbers before they parted ways, and he’d smirked and made some offhand remark about her asking for his number. She shook her head at the memory and opened the attachment.

It was of a lined notebook page that said, “ _20,000 from own accounts, 30,000 from M"_. The paper in the image was probably what Red had photographed before they left for lunch. He was right, it was of interest to her, but it also meant she had to spend longer on the records that night than she anticipated.

 _Thanks a lot_ , she texted back.

He could interpret that as he wanted.

* * *

"What did you think of my little gift?” he asked, feet up on the desk, the tip of one shoe moving back and forth, arms behind his neck.

“Well, you’re right, it was helpful, but it kept me up later than I wanted.” She put the print outs down on the desk and resisted pushing his feet off the edge.

“You know, most women I’ve kept up late didn’t complain about it.” He slid his feet off the desk, cat-like and slow, eyes dragging across her face, mouth twitching, almost seemingly having sensed her desire to push his feet off, and taking pleasure in preventing her from doing what she wanted.

She decided to view the comment as a progression in their partnership. If he had still been viewing her primarily negatively, it was unlikely he would’ve directed the sort of innuendo at her that he typically reserved for women he had least felt some slight amount of toleration for.

“Well, I assume you want to know what I found out,” she said, sitting down in her chair. She had decided spitefully keeping it on the other end of the desk was inconvenient.

“We’re going to have to postpone that conversation, because we’ve been called to visit the resident meat locker to learn Chase’s autopsy findings.”

She wondered if he let her sit down before telling her the news as a way to irritate her. Even with their deal, was he looking for relatively benign ways to bother her that didn’t involve going after her inexperience? He seemed like the sort to exploit loopholes in contracts for his amusement or gain, even if they were informal, verbal contracts.

“Okay, let’s get going, then.” She pushed her shoe against the foot of the table and rolled the chair back and stood up, walking in the direction of the morgue. Or at least, the general direction of where she thought the morgue was.

She looked over her shoulder at her partner. “Coming?” She smiled at him—the sort of practiced, fake smile a cashier gave a customer.

Even if he was trying to play a game with her, that didn’t mean she had to participate.

* * *

Liz was happy to find that they weren’t going to be viewing the victim with his chest cavity open. She could view a bloody crime scene with cool objectivity, but she didn’t like the idea of looking at a human being, cut open, organs exposed, like a high school biology project.

He lay on the silver table, even paler in the cold light of the room, blue sheet pulled up to the middle of his chest. His skin was dotted by neat, little black stitches, almost like the job had been done with a sewing machine. Whoever had done it was careful about their work and took pride in it. They wouldn’t have abided by huge, sloppy stitches that looked like they belonged on a sail. Still, it reminded her of Frankenstein, and with the way Chase was laying on the table with his eyes closed, head cradled by a metal plate, she almost expected him to rise up with new, unnatural life. Red looked at the man dispassionately. He’d probably seen dozens of people like that before, so any effect it had on him had left years ago.

“What secrets did the dead tell you today Kaplan?” Red asked the woman that was approaching them with a clipboard.

She was probably the one that had done the stitching job. When Liz saw her at the crime scene, she seemed like the sort that was meticulous and picky. If she had a home library, she probably organized the books through some process that was more complicated than simply putting the author’s names in alphabetical order.

“He didn’t tell me anything very revealing, unfortunately,” the older woman sighed, lifting up several sheets with blue gloved fingers. “As I thought, it was a 9 mm from a Glock 26 that did him in. Based on the heavy halo of gunshot residue on his shirt and skin, I estimate the shooter was probably about twelve inches away from him. No fingerprints on the bullet from sliding it in, so the killer was wearing gloves or had his fingerprints burned off at some point. There’s no skin under the victim’s nails or other signs of struggle. He didn’t see the shot coming, and it was essentially instant death for him.”

Some people would find it comforting that Chase hadn’t suffered much when he died. But where was the consolation in that? Maybe he hadn’t been in hours of pain before dying, but in his final minutes he’d probably been afraid, the base emotion ricocheting up and down his spine and through the organic circuitry of his brain, and there had probably been at least one moment, one second, of realization that he was going to die before the bullet ripped through his heart and shut off any ability to think for good. Perhaps he hadn’t suffered physically, but mentally? In only a few minutes, he’d suffered more than many people would in their lives.

“I see.” Red had returned to looking at the dead man, like he could see something that Kaplan had missed. “Anything else?”

“What did we say about patience?” Kaplan let the papers flutter back down to the clipboard.

“That I’m the very model of it.” He gave a closed mouthed smile.

“Hardly.” She gave him a hard look through her glasses. “Well, I don’t know if what I’m about to tell you is connected to his death, but it’s still interesting, considering some of the oddities of this case.”

Kaplan put the clipboard down on a table behind her and stepped closer to the examining table, tilting Chase’s head to the side. The ease with which she did it somehow made Liz uncomfortable.

“See these scars?” She brushed back the hair near Chase’s ear with one finger, his dark hair shimmering the blue and white of the room, the colors of surgical sterility. “They’re plastic surgery scars. He has one near each ear. They’re not very noticeable, and he kept his hair long enough to cover them. It looks like he had a bit of a face lift, but that’s not the only plastic surgery he had.”

Her hands traveled further into his hair and parted the hairline, revealing another small, raised scar. “He had a trichophytic brow lift to raise his eyebrows and smooth the forehead.” She pulled her hand out of his hair, and it flopped back down. She waved to his cheeks. “He also had cheek implants and it looks like someone modified his nose to make it look smaller.”

“Okay, so…he was into plastic surgery. Do you think this is relevant?” Liz tapped a finger against her crossed arms.

Kaplan turned that gaze on her, and when she did, Liz felt like she’d been blasted by winter air. “I don’t know. I’m just the examiner, you’re the detective. I’m just here to give all the results. You and Raymond get to interpret it.”

She wanted to fire back by saying that, though what Kaplan had just said was true, didn’t she also need to only give the information that was important? It wouldn’t matter if their victim had been woman that liked plastic surgery. It probably had no bearing on the case. But the more logical side of her won out. Ultimately, Kaplan was right, and Liz fully knew that it was hard to know so early on in an investigation what mattered and what didn’t. Sometimes the most irrelevant thing became the most significant piece of evidence.

“Yeah, okay.” She uncrossed her arms, tongue pressed to her bottom teeth, and she glanced at Red. He slid his eyes over to her, expression and posture placid. He wasn’t easy to read, and it annoyed her. There was little doubt he’d spent decades carefully schooling his body and face to betray little of what he felt. Sometimes keeping your emotions under wraps was a matter of life or death, and if not that, sometimes a confession hinged on a good performance.

“Thank you, Kaplan.” He jerked his head in a small nod. “Keep in touch if you find anything else.”

“Well, it’s not like either of us are going anywhere,” she said, waving a pen in Chase’s direction and picking up the clipboard again.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to return to Maryland again,” he said, turning to her with a mock sigh “Please, won’t you try the crab this time?”

“Not a chance.”

* * *

It was like some kind of hellish version of Groundhog Day. There they were once again, sitting in Maggie’s dim living room, sun oozing in through thin curtains, dragging amber light across Maggie’s cheeks, painting Liz’s hands in rippling shadows. She wondered if Maggie felt as if she and Red were some kind of demons sent to torment her, not infuriating because of their callousness, but draining because of their persistence and clipped, stiff upper lip professionalism and requisite sympathy.

“I apologize for a third visit in as many days,” Red said to her, sitting on the edge of the sofa opposite Maggie. “But we need any information you can tell us about Mr. Schneider’s habits—his friends, acquaintances, and routine. It doesn’t have to be all today, since we’ll probably be in town for the next few days.”

Liz blinked, the world flashing black and white with the flutter of her eyelids. She gave him a look that said, _We didn’t talk about staying for a few days_. But it appeared he had made the command decision to set that discussion aside for the moment.

“There isn’t really a lot to tell.” Maggie ran a hand through her hair. It hung ragged around her face, but it looked like it had been washed since yesterday. “I mean that—honestly. Chase was a really private guy. That’s one of the things we had in common. We liked being alone together. He wasn’t rude or anything. He’d talk to someone if they wanted to, but he wasn’t usually the one to initiate things. It’s a miracle we even ended up together,” she laughed, breathy and light, and the dark film that had wrapped around her lifted off for a moment. “I had just been jogging in the park, and I really needed to sit down. The bench he was on was the only one nearby and we just started talking—”

Reality set in once more as her face closed in on itself, and she pushed her hands into the sofa cushion and shifted. “Anyway, he didn’t really have _friends_ , I guess. He had acquaintances and clients he’d meet with every once in a while, but other than that he pretty much stayed home. If he went out, it was by usually himself or with me and Evynne. I didn’t ask about where he went because I trusted him, and I understand needing alone time.”

“Could you maybe get us a list of his acquaintances and contacts? You can just call one of us with it.” Liz pulled a scrap of paper out of her pocket, patting herself down before realizing she didn’t have a writing utensil.

Red slipped a hand into his jacket’s breast pocket and pressed the cool cylinder of a pen into her palm. “…Thanks,” she mumbled, pushing a strand of hair away from her cheek, glancing away. She scribbled her number down and half-raised, half-crouched away from the sofa as she stretched her arm out to Maggie.

Maggie took the number and nodded at it, putting it down next to her. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you much. I really wish I could, truly I do, but there were just so many things about Chase that—”

“What sorts of things?” Even while interrupting, Red managed to nudge into the conversation in a way that didn’t seem abrupt or rude.

“Well—I never met his family, and he never talked about them. He just said that things had been bad back home and he’d left them behind a long time ago, and he’d rather not talk about it.” Her shoulders went a bit rigid, and her legs moved again. She seemed to uncomfortable, realizing how it sounded strange as she said it, but maybe like she was only realizing it then.

“You never found that odd?” Liz raised an eyebrow.

Something flashed across Maggie’s face, and she whirled on the sofa seat to meet her eyes, shadows slashing black lines across her face. “Chase was private, but he wasn’t hiding things from me, _all right_?” Her lips were pulled so tight across her teeth they turned pale. “I understand what it’s like to have a bad parent. If he didn’t want to talk about it, or if he didn’t want me to meet them, I sure _wasn’t_ going to press it.”

Red turned to Liz, eyes narrow. She felt like she was failing a test she didn’t know she’d been taking until then. She scooted back and pressed herself into the sofa. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply anything like that. It was—these are just questions to help us determine what happened to your husband. Some of them might come across as harsh, but they’re only to help us figure this out more quickly.”

Any fight that had been in Maggie poured out of her and left her body limp. “I know. I’m sorry. Both of you have been nothing but kind and helpful about this,” she said, glancing between them, but she said it to Red the longest. Maybe it should have annoyed Liz, but she understood. Red had been the one that had initially built up trust between them and Maggie, and he had been the one to deliver the news and immediately extend comfort.

“I think that’s all we need to talk about for the moment,” Red said, sliding his hands to his thighs, giving one glance to Liz. She stared at him, not letting him make her feel like she’d failed some arbitrary test he’d written. “As Detective Keen said, call either of us when you’ve compiled the list of Chase’s contacts.”

Liz knew full well which person Maggie was going to be calling.

“Sure,” Maggie whispered. She didn’t make a move to stand, so Red was the one to take a step forward and shake her hand—his solid and sure, hers drooping and listless.

“Until next time,” he said, then walked out of the living room.

Before following, Liz held her hand out to Maggie, who stared at her palm for a moment. Without thinking, she’d extending her scarred hand, and the woman’s eyes were fixed on it, and it was like she could feel fire anew against the ragged skin. She shifted her hand so her sleeve fell down over the scar.

Like she was pulled out of a trance, Maggie shook her hand. The shake was limp and cold, and Liz could have sworn that Maggie’s hand felt a bit wet.

She wondered if she’d been sobbing into her palms before they’d arrived.

* * *

They passed Sizzler again, but they weren’t on their way to lunch. They were simply driving, going nowhere in particular.

“ ‘We’ll probably be in town for the next few days’? “ Liz pitched her voice down as low and as gravely as she could.

“I sound _nothing_ like that,” he said, and she almost thought he was pouting.

“That’s not the point. We didn’t talk about staying in Germantown any longer than an hour or so today. When did this ‘few days’ idea come up, and why didn’t you talk to me about it?” She turned in the seat, the seat belt twisting and digging into her chest and shoulder.

“Elizabeth, _please_ be careful with the car,” he told her, one hand on the steering wheel as he used the other to untwist the seat belt.

She pushed his hand away. “You’re evading,” she said, voice tight.

Red sighed, eyes pressing closed under his sunglasses, and Liz’s nose wrinkled as she smiled at him, mentally putting a point in her side of a tally that had only just been created in her mind.

“I didn’t decide we’re staying in town. It was something I simply said to make Mrs. Schneider feel more comfortable and less rushed giving us the names, and thus more likely to give us Chase’s contacts in a timely manner. But I do think we should stay here for a few days. There are things we need to look into.”

She licked her dry lips and shifted her jaw. “I don’t know if I have the money to stay here for a few days. I mean I might, but—”

“We can share a room.” He tilted his chin up, squinting as sunlight glared through the windshield.

“We are _not_ ,” she violently stabbed an index finger in his direction, “sharing a room, Reddington.”

“All right,” he continued, unperturbed. “If you don’t have enough money, then I will lend you some of mine.”

“Oh, _hell_ no. I won’t be in your debt,” she said, closing her hand into a fist.

“You’re making this far more difficult than it needs to be. I’m not making you take the money, but you were the one uncertain whether you’d be able to pay for a room. Take it or leave it, Elizabeth. I am only trying to make this investigation go as easily as possible.”

Something like shame waved through her chest and she uncurled her hand, placing it flat against the warm leather car seat. She was doing it again—fighting and clawing when there was no reason to. He was right, as much as she didn’t want to admit it. Staying at a motel or hotel for a few days while they hunted leads made more sense than constantly driving back and forth from D.C. to Germantown.

“Okay,” she said, voice quiet, watching a building go by. It was an abandoned mattress store, windows black, a dusty bed frame pushed against a black wall, a yellow " _going out of business"_  sign half-collapsed at glass doors. “I will pay you back, though. And I’ll only take the money if I need it.”

“Make sure to write up an IOU, then.” He slid a glance at her, mouth curling . “I have a pen if you need one.”


	7. Chapter 7

The room reminded her of the early days of her divorce.

She’d spent a few months skulking through a series of similar rooms, swiping identical cards through the scanners of identical doors, traveling through the hallways that smelt faintly of the tang of cleaner, and occasionally the sting of chlorine when she managed to live in a hotel that housed a swimming pool. All the rooms were like returning to a stage set night after night with the set dressings only marginally changed—perhaps a slightly bigger bed pushed closer to the left wall with a thicker duvet, or a lamp that was a hideous shade of orange instead of pale green.

Liz couldn’t afford to stay in the house after the divorce. The salary of a uniformed officer wouldn’t permit it. And even if her money had allowed it, she wouldn’t have stayed anyway. There were too many memories stained on the place, branded on certain rooms or furniture. If she stood in a certain spot in the kitchen, it was like she could smell the simmer of burning eggs singing nostrils again while she shouted at Tom and confronted him over what the private investigator had learned.

No, even if she was an heiress, she wouldn’t have stayed there. She wasn’t going to try to remake memories there like she was taping over an episode on a VHS tape that she didn’t want anymore. The old patterns and events of her old life would bleed through, jumping and flickering between the frames of the new life she was trying to create.

The thing about hotel rooms was that they implied change, always. They were not a place of permanency. As Red had pointed out, they were way stations between one destination and the next, requiring no attachment or investment. All the decorations and furnishings were already there. All she had to do was pay on time, and everything else was taken care of for her.

That was a small mercy for a woman, who, for several months, barely had the will or energy to feed herself. Any vibrancy and fight in her was shoved into the compartment of her job. Her co-workers never truly knew the tumult she was going through, though one of them had pointed out she had grown a bit thinner, and a few asked her if she was okay. She’d had to become quite adept at putting parts of herself in different boxes and keeping the boxes shut until she made it to her hotel when all the refuse could spill out of the boxes.

But that time was past, she reminded herself as sat on the edge of the hotel’s bed the dragged a comb through her hair, a game show on the TV in the background with a brightly clothed host and a nervous contestant slamming their hand against a buzzer. Liz owned an apartment now, and perhaps it wasn’t the most spacious or desirable, it was still hers. The room she was in was only a rest stop before she returned to her base of operations.

She slid off the bed and rummaged through her overnight bag, pulling out a pair of pajamas. At least Red hadn’t suggested that they immediately book a hotel room before returning to their homes and retrieving a few items. She thought he was probably a man that liked his comforts and wouldn’t want to be without them, even if he would only be in a place for a day or two.

At least there were a few of his idiosyncrasies that worked to her advantage.

* * *

She awoke the next morning laying on her stomach with her face mashed down onto the pillow, hearing muffled so that she only heard a faint thumping. She raised her chin, squinting against the sunlight trailing in through gaps between the curtains.

The thumping came again, louder now that her sensory organs weren’t buried in the depths of a pillow. It came from the other side of the door, persistent and rhythmic. She shoved her hair out of her eyes, blowing at a few strands that still tried to fall in her face after swiping them away, and kicked the blanket off. She walked to the door, arms crossed over her abdomen against the thin fabric of her pajama tank top, though she knew there was no way the other person could see her unless they had stepped out of a comic book and possessed X-ray vision.

“Are you awake?” Red’s voice vibrated through the wood of the door.

She huffed. “You don’t need to be a living alarm clock. We agreed to meet at 9:30. It’s—”

She glanced at the clock on the nightstand, and the green numbers proclaimed it to be _9:45_. “Oh,” Liz said. “Sorry about that. I guess my body just needed to get caught up on sleep or something. I’ll open up the door in a minute, let me just get dressed.”

“Oh, don’t inconvenience yourself on _my_ account,” he said, and she could hear the smug curl of his lips.

“Yeah, maybe you don’t mind me being in my pajamas, but _I_ mind, so just give me a minute.” She turned her back on the door and uncrossed her arms, walking back over to the bed and crouched down at the end of it where her bag lay, the zipper squealing as she jerked the bag open.

In record time she shucked off the pajamas and pulled on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. She made sure to tuck the pajamas down into the bottom of the bag and zip it up for good measure. She didn’t need him seeing the moon and stars pattern on them and mock her for it.

A moment later, she returned to the door and unlocked it. Red stepped inside and swiveled head back and forth, leaning forward and glancing around her like there was something truly fascinating about her room. Once he seemed satisfied with whatever he was looking for, he smoothed down a rumpled section of the blanket and sat down on the bed and inserted two fingers into his pants pocket and pulled out a folded over piece of paper. He waved it at her between the two fingers.

“Mrs. Schneider called and provided me with the names we wanted,” he said.

“That was faster than I expected.” She sat down next to him, shifting one leg so it didn’t rest on a particularly hard lump in the blanket. “When did she call?”

He raised his hand and pulled back his sleeve to reveal the watch on his wrist. “Hmmm.” He pursed his lips. “About two hours ago.”

“Didn’t that wake you up?” If Maggie had interrupted her deep, almost catatonic sleep, she probably would’ve had to calm herself down before picking up.

“No. I don’t usually sleep very well, and last night wasn’t much of a break in that pattern.” His mouth tightened for a moment and he stared at her, like he wasn’t sure of what he’d just said. He dipped his head and unfolded the paper, placing it in the gap between them. “As you can see, Maggie wasn’t exaggerating. Chase didn’t have many friends, let alone acquaintances.”

There were only seven names on the list. She frowned. “There has to be more than this. What about his client list?”

“That list is on his computer. Computer forensics is already going through it and will call us with the results when they’re done with it. So for now, this is what we have to work with.” He fanned his hand out over the list, like he was presenting a masterpiece to her.

The short list was both good and bad. They wouldn’t spend countless hours going through his contacts, figuring out alibis, playing catch up with contacts that weren’t home, or endlessly speculating on motives for six different possible suspects. But unfortunately, such a sparse list meant that the information she needed to understand Chase, and thus possibly understand who killed him, would likely also be sparse.

“There’s no one whose name starts or ends with _M_ on this list,” she said. On the way back to D.C. the day before, she had told Red that Chase’s finances showed no sign that spending or depositing large amounts of money was common for him, and she found no deposit of the “ _30,000 from M_ ” that the note had referred to.

“I have to say, it would be much easier to find this ‘ _M_ ’ if he would lead us to him by conveniently whistling in ‘In The Hall of the Mountain King’ when we’re nearby.” He sighed and tapped a finger against his leg.

Liz raised an eyebrow and leaned her arms against her legs, lowering her head to catch his gaze. “Okay, you might want to run that by me again. Is this some obscure cultural reference I don’t understand?”

“The movie _M_ from 1931,” he said, frowning. She blinked and shrugged at him, raising her hands in the air. “Starring Peter Lorre and directed by Fritz Lang,” he went on, as if the details he provided about a movie she had never seen would stir a nonexistent memory inside of her.

“Yeah, sorry, it doesn’t ring any bells,” she said, about to take the paper from him, but as he scooted around on the blanket to face her, the paper fluttered away to the furthest side of the bed.

“It is a hallmark of early German cinema. In fact, it’s a hallmark of early crime and thriller films in any language. It’s a fantastic film and an absolute classic.” He pinched his index finger and thumb together and dragged them through the air like he was underlining his point.

“Well, I can’t say that I’m a connoisseur of early German cinema,” she said, then shook her head. “Well, actually, I did see _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_ years ago.”

She had dated a film major named Jeremy for a few months when she was a freshman in college during the phase of her life when she realized that perhaps dating troubled, suspicious (and sometimes criminally inclined) men wasn’t a good idea. She and Jeremy had met during a general, required English class, and he’d been attractive in a tragic poet sort of way, with his narrow face and long, curled black hair and thick, framed glasses. He had seemed quite nice and they found enough to talk about. He also could occasionally be funny with his offbeat humor.

When they started dating, he introduced her to a plethora of films she’d never seen before, and she’d obliged by watching most of the movies he suggested, though mostly out of politeness. In addition to his all encompassing love for all things film, Jeremy was a horror buff, though not the kind that thought that Nightmare On Elm Street 5 was high art. Certainly, he enjoyed some gorier films, but his horror tastes tended to the more psychological and strange, sometimes verging on art house-esque. He’d told her about _The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari_ for weeks before he’d persuaded her to watch it.

Ultimately, she found it to be a surreal experience, and while she didn’t regret seeing it, she wasn’t ready to venture back into the world of German films, thriller, horror, or otherwise.

“Well, regardless of whether _M_ is on the list or not, I believe we should talk to Blaze first. He’s the one Chase ultimately sold the truck to,” he said, twisting and pronouncing _Blaze_ with some amount of disdain.

“Do you have something against the Blazes of the world?” Something like a laugh pitched the end of her words up.

“I simply find that anyone who names their child something quite pretentious tends to hand that pretentiousness down to their offspring.”

“Yeah, like someone that names their kid ‘Raymond Reddington’. That sounds like the name of some kind of smarmy super villain.” She rose from the bed and stretched her arms, ready to visit the man that Red seemingly had disliked from the instant he heard the man’s name.

“Oh, _Elizabeth_ ,” he said, sounding almost fond. “If you want to insult me, you must think of something more original.”

He walked around her and to the chair she’d tossed her jacket on and came closer to her, holding the jacket to his chest for a moment as he smiled at her. “I’ve been called a villain of some sort often enough that it doesn’t bother me at all anymore.” He dropped the jacket in her arms and patted the article of clothing.

She felt the warmth of his hand through the fabric.

* * *

Red trusted his instincts.

But he _so_ had hoped that Blaze wouldn’t be the sort of person he’d thought the man would be. Investigations were hard enough without strange interviewees. Blaze had ears that stuck out from the sides of his head, the tips glowing pink from the sun that burned behind them. He leaned on the railing of his porch, smiling with his square, thick jaw tilted to the side, looking down his broad nose at where they stood at the bottom of the porch.

“I really am sorry that Chase is dead, but y’know, how cool is it to be interviewed by the cops?” Blaze tried to pronounce his words in a way that sounded sophisticated, but every so often he would swallow some letters. He leaned more heavily against his arms and crossed his legs at the ankles.

Red tilted his neck back. “How _refreshing_ it is to find someone oh so enthusiastic about being questioned in the course of a murder investigation.” He could feel Elizabeth’s glare scrap across his cheek.

“Hey man, I’ve seen the shows.” He tapped the side of his head. “I know I’m not an actual suspect or anything, you’re just trying to play bad cop.” Blaze looked like somehow watching police procedurals granted him vast knowledge as to how actual investigations were conducted.

“Oh, I’m not the bad cop. Detective Keen here is the very bad and altogether no good cop. Aren’t you?” He glanced at Elizabeth, and wrapped he one hand around the bottom of the porch railing, tilting his hips.

“…Yeah,” she said, through pinched lips.

“There you are.” Red nodded and waved a hand at her. “She’s a woman of few words, but what words she does use are used with precision.”

No doubt she thought that he was simply doing this to irritate her. Though part of him took enjoyment in teasing her and get a rise out of her, thus far, she had proved to be quite competent. Setting himself up as the mercurial half of their partnership made Blaze more likely to give whatever information they needed to at least one of them. Suspects and witnesses could sense if you didn’t like them, even if you did your best to hide it, and Red hadn’t done much at all to disguise his dislike for Blaze. If he set Elizabeth up as the blunt and fair one, their conversation would go more smoothly.

Underneath her jacket, her chest rose and fell. He had quickly come to know that the movement meant that she was burying her annoyance—or at least setting it aside—for the sake of a good outcome for the situation.

“Mr. Jenks,” she said, red lips pressed together in a forced smile. “We understand that Chase Schneider sold a truck to you about a month ago. Could you tell us anything about his demeanor while he was doing so?”

Blaze frowned, a fingernail digging at a piece of paint that was flaking off the porch railing. “Yeah, he did. What does this have to do with the investigation?”

“I do believe he’s evading,” Red said, giving a knowing glance to Elizabeth, and made a disapproving tsking noise.

Whether she knew it or not, he was circling their quarry for her, snapping at his heels, and pushing Blaze further in her direction, further into trusting her more than him.

“It’s fine,” she said, gaze flickering over to him for a moment, eyes wandering over his face like she was trying to figure out his game. Something glinted in her eyes, and Red thought she realized what he was doing.

She _was_ a quick study. He wanted to smile at that, but he kept his expression annoyed and almost sleepy as he looked at Blaze.

“Don’t listen to him,” she said, jerking her head at Red and rolled her eyes. “He’s just cranky and counting down the days until retirement, so he takes it out on everyone. I would tell you what this has to do with our investigation, but I can’t disclose that information right now. But just know that it is important that you tell us how Mr. Schneider acted the day you bought the truck from him.”

Blaze pushed out his thick bottom lip and stopped digging at the paint flake. “Well, the thing you need to understand about Chase is that no one really knew him very well. So when I saw him, I pretty much thought he seemed the same as ever. But I guess…”

He pulled his hands off the railing and shoved them into his pockets, now just leaning one shoulder against the railing. “I guess he seemed sort of tense. Chase might have been private an’ distant, but he never made you feel like he was in a rush to get the conversation over with. He was okay with small talk, but when I bought the truck from him, I was just trying to ask him about this ‘n that, but he seemed in a rush to get it all over with.”

“And how did you pay for the truck?” Elizabeth had pulled out her notebook and was scribbling something down in it, black pen a flurry of motion, hair falling into her eyes.

“A check,” Blaze said, blinking at the question.

She bit her lower lip and a breeze kicked her hair away from her face, but she ignored it as she finished writing down Blaze’s information. She snapped the notebook closed, fingertips pink from the breeze gnawing at them. “Thank you, Mr. Jenks. I think that’s all we needed.”

She looked at Red from the corner of her eye, silently asking him if she thought they were done. He dragged one hand away from the railing and widened his eyes at a piece of paint that fell off. “You should really invest some money into repainting this. I saw a hardware store not a two miles away from your house as we drove here.” He raised his eyes to the large facade of Blaze’s home. “I do believe you could afford the investment.”

Elizabeth raised one hand, tips of her fingers hovering near his elbow, seemingly about to grab it and guide them back to the car, but she dropped it back into her pocket and turned away, heading back to the car without him, expecting him to follow.

Red exhaled, unaware he’d been holding his breath at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Careful, Red, your crush is showing. B)


	8. Chapter 8

“Option one—he was a plastic surgery fanatic.” Elizabeth held up her index finger and pressed the other finger against it.

Red tapped his hand against the back of the bench they were sitting on, one leg crossed over the other. He pinched his mouth and looked skeptically at her finger. She was likely just joking, but he couldn’t be completely sure with how unpredictable she could be.

“I would think you would’ve named one of the less obvious options. Being a plastic surgery fanatic doesn’t line up with what we know about him.” He picked up the flavored water that sat next to him and took a slow sip from it. “I know that buying plastic water bottles is apparently wasteful, but I haven’t had this in _so long_ , and I doubt my buying a flavored water once every six months is going to make the Earth shed another inch of the polar ice caps.” He held the bottle up in front of him and turned it in his hands, rotating it to the nutrition label. It baffled him that water, even naturally flavored water, needed a nutrition label of any sort.

“I’m just getting the obvious out of the way first,” she sighed, slumping back against the bench. “You’re right—Chase was a private guy, and besides that, didn’t seem very materialistic. I doubt he got the plastic surgery for vanity reasons, though I guess maybe his wife could’ve encouraged him to do it to be more attractive to her? But she doesn’t seem controlling. So…”

She curled her hands around the bottom of the bench and winced and yanked her hand back, her fingertips perhaps having made contact with petrified gum underneath the seat. She rubbed her hand across her jeans. “It seems more likely it was for cosmetic or reconstructive reasons.”

He put the water bottle down and turned to face her. He stopped drumming his hand. “Perhaps. But there was little evidence in the autopsy that he had been in an accident that required reconstruction. It is possible, I suppose, that it could have been for corrective purposes for traits he was born with.”

“But lifting up his hair line? Cheek implants?” She ran a hand over her nose. “Nose shortening?”

Her nose was fine as it was, he thought. More than fine, actually.

He banished the thought.

“Yes, well, who can penetrate the mysteries of our dead man? _Ah_ ,” he snapped his fingers, “that’s right. You.”

She dropped her chin into her hand. “Some back up support would be nice. Anyway, it’s hard to come up with any sort of idea of what he would or wouldn’t do with how little information we have on him. He seemed like a stranger to most people he knew, even to his wife.”

“Well,” he leaned back against the bench, watching a man jog by with a thin, sinuous dog. “There’s always the possibility that he was changing his appearance because he didn’t want to look like his old self.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Now who’s being obvious with their observations? Not wanting to look like your old self is the broadest reason anyone gets plastic surgery.”

“Yes, but not everyone changes because they don’t want to be recognized as their former selves.”

She lifted her chin from her hand and rolled her shoulders back, eyes narrowed at him, like she was trying to decide whether he was kidding or not. “There’s no basis for that theory which—actually, isn’t even a theory. It’s just wild speculation.”

“Speculation, yes. Wild? No. Mr. Schneider was extremely private, and by all accounts, there was no one he was close to besides his wife and daughter. There was his strange behavior the day that he sold Blaze the truck. Now, granted, perhaps he had a client he needed to meet, but putting it in the context with what we know, I don’t think so.” He shook his head, unscrewed the water bottle’s cap, and took another sip.

As he did, Elizabeth clamped her hands down on the bench, avoiding where she had touched the gum previously, and turned to look him in the eye. Renewed energy flickered in the depths of her gaze. “And then there’s the crime scene being strangely clean, and the mugging seeming almost… _staged_ ,” she almost whispered the last word like it was an epiphany. “Do you think he changed his appearance to get away from someone and that person caught up with him?”

He balanced the water bottle on his leg. “As you said, we don’t have any solid basis for that idea yet, but I do find it to be an intriguing possibility given everything we know.”

The glimmer in her eyes receded and she turned away from him. “Well, either way, we should probably get going. We have six more people to interview, and we only have today and tomorrow to do it.”

* * *

They interviewed four more witnesses from the list. They proved not to even give the smallest bit of insight into Chase’s life in the days leading up to his death. When Maggie had called him that morning, he’d asked questions about her husband's mental state in the days before he died, but she’d said he seemed the same as ever, though maybe slightly distracted, but that could have been because of a project that was late. That only slightly lined up with what Blaze had told them.

But then, Maggie struck him as someone that took things at face value and people at their word, rarely digging into the deeper meanings. Such a world view could be immensely dangerous, but there was also something innocent and refreshing about it.

It twisted something inside of him to see that naivete dying inside of her. If she was going to learn that people were not what they seemed, there would have been a far kinder way for her to learn it than through the death of her husband.

He and Elizabeth drove back to the hotel in silence, streetlights slicing over the car, and as they passed through a bar district, smudgy silhouettes of people leaned against walls, snake-like trails of smoke slithering out of their mouths as they exhaled and laughed with each other. The neon signs turned them into glowing red and green specters. At the end of the district, there was a male strip club called _The Beef Barn_ , with the sign on the outside of it blinking on and off, showing the golden outline of a man removing his shirt. Elizabeth snorted at it.

Then, she had mumbled something about the contacts giving them nothing to go on, and then something about Chase being some kind of a monk, but instead of being devoted to religion, he was devoted to graphic design. Red pointed out monks didn’t marry and have children so the comparison wasn’t a very good one, to which she responded that celibacy wasn’t required until the twelfth century, so her comparison was still solid.

 _Well_ , he thought, _she isn’t versed in German cinema, but she knows facts about the medieval era, or she’s at least educated in some aspects of Catholic history._

As they pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, he filed the fact away. He didn’t know what it meant yet, but he’d review it and figure out if it fit anywhere into the portrait of her that he was constructing. Deciding to give her a second chance was proving to be one of the better choices he’d made recently. True, she had made some mistakes, such as when she’d misread the way to handle Maggie the day before, but he’d seen worse errors in judgment. That was hardly the most prominent feature in her personality. That she was prickly as hell was the understatement of the year—perhaps a lifetime—-, but it also made her… _persistent_.

It was like the fire she had lived through burrowed inside of her and made a home for itself in her bones, but instead of letting it consume her and dry her up, leaving her ruined and hollowed out, she took hold of that fire and made it an intrinsic part of herself and, in some ways, used it to her advantage. She needed to be careful with it, but if she honed it properly, she would be richly rewarded. All things considered, she was doing quite well already. If she was “quite good” now, what would she be like if given a bit more time and help?

Something criminals and detectives alike would have to reckon with, most likely.

She’d interrupted him from his analytical thoughts about her when they got to her room and she turned around to face him, her key card dangling in one hand at her side. Her eyelids were heavy, hair ruffled both from wind and irritation.

“Well, good night, Reddington,” she said, key card lifting to the door.

He wondered if her using his last name meant anything—putting distance between them for some reason because she was annoyed at him for any dozen possible reasons?—or if she was simply using it without thinking.

He took a step back. “Good night, Elizabeth.”

* * *

A car alarm wailing somewhere out in the distance of the city jolted her awake, heart pounding like a prisoner bumping their palm against the bars of their prison cell.

 _Whump whump whump_ , murmured her heart against the curves of her ribs.

The car alarm kept screaming, cries echoing off sides of the concrete buildings and the pavement, like the electronic equivalent of a wounded animal crying out as it was attacked, fangs in its throat, claws gliding down through its skin and burying themselves deep into the creature’s muscle tissue.

The pillow cover was stiff against her cheek as she stared numbly at the clock as the luminous minutes slid by. Her hazy, still sleep heavy mind remembered that she had to appear as a witness at Tom’s trial tomorrow. It wasn’t enough that she’d discovered that he was using her, that she had to go through a divorce, that—

 _No_.

The car alarm stopped howling, the owner having turned it off, or the perpetrator having disabled it and gotten away. Her mind shifted and snapped into focus.

She wasn’t testifying tomorrow. That had been almost a year and a half ago. She wasn’t in a hotel because she was caught in an endless cycle of nervous drifting, dutifully appearing at work each day with a set jaw and a brave face. She was a homicide detective. She was investigating a murder. She was not married. She had an apartment, not a hotel room.

She was investigating a murder.

She was not married.

She was alone.

Liz turned over on her side and fell back asleep.

* * *

“I get being private,” she said as she slammed the car door closed. Red winced, and she mumbled an apology, settling one hand against the door as if it was a pet she had tripped over that she needed to comfort.

“But there’s a fine line between private and semi-reclusive,” she grumbled.

They had just finished speaking with one of the last witnesses on the list—Lilian Rush. She was another graphic design artist with whom Chase would occasionally talk to, primarily about their respective projects. Lilian told them that she never knew much about Chase’s personal life, aside from the fact that he was married and had a young daughter. Aside from the occasional bit of small talk that everyone indulged in, the only thing they ever talked about was work, and she hadn’t spoken to him in six months. At their last meeting, there seemed to be nothing off. He seemed himself.

 “Seeming himself” meant that he was polite but distant, and always seeming as if he was holding something back. If there was one thing that could be said about their victim, it was that he was at least consistent.

That should have made it easier to know what had lead to his death. An abrupt change in routine or personality pointed to something being wrong. And indeed, the breaks in the pattern they did have pointed to something, but there was no clue at all as to what that “something” was.

Red was about to say something—probably something sarcastic about her observation or her attitude, but his phone began to buzz. Without waiting for a second buzz, he immediately answered it. Liz tilted her head to glance out the window, eyes roving over the bland facade of an apartment complex, but she kept her ear tipped toward Red.

It could have been an entirely private conversation she wasn’t meant to be privy to, but if that was true, he really should’ve reconsidered taking private calls during work hours in front of his partner. Perhaps she was being particularly ungenerous that day, but something impatient scratched against the back of her skull. Ultimately, the conversation was too quiet for her to follow, with the other person’s voice whispering on the other end, and his responses revealing little.

He lowered the phone, phone thumping against the screen to end the call. “That was Maggie,” he told her, head lowered as he removed the list of Chase’s contacts from his pocket. “She remembered something that could help us.”

“… _And_?” She lifted one hand from her arm. Couldn’t he simply deliver the news all at once?

“… _And,_ ” he turned to her, dropping the list into her lap, where it fluttered to rest on her thigh. “She said that the last contact on our list, Logan Shaw, got into an argument with Chase the week before he died and showed up that Wednesday and almost punched him in the cheek. He was apparently somewhat drunk."

He rolled his eyes. "Some men just can’t quite hold their liquor.”

“Why didn’t she tell us this earlier?” She left the list on her leg where it was.

Red lifted his eyebrows, lips narrowing. “ _Oh_ , do you now our grieving widow to be suspicious? How very dramatic of you. It is a cliche though. I’d much rather it be some carefully plotted twist since the widow is just _so_ obvious, though less cliche than the butler, at least, so I'll give you points for that.”

“Well, first of all, there’s no butler—”

“It’s the principle of the thing.” He closed his eyes and nodded.

“…Second of all, I’m not suspicious that she did it. I simply find it odd. Isn’t that the kind of thing most people would remember? I’m just looking at all the angles, regardless of whether they’re plausible or not.” She lifted her fingers off her arm and shrugged.

“I find it plausible that, because she has been quite fraught and primarily concentrating on her daughter's needs, she didn't remember to tell us until now,” he said, some bit of sharpness edging into his voice.

“It’s understandable,” she said, noncommittally. “And do you have some problem?”

He turned away from her. “No,” he said, voice restrained.

“I know we said we’re not going to fight, but if there is some issue between us, we can rationally, calmly discuss it and hash it out. That’s what co-workers do. So, Red, if you’ve got a problem, talk to me. I’m a big girl,” she raised both her hands and smiled. “I promise not to cry.”

“I believe that we need to call Mr. Shaw and set up an appointment with him,” Red said, jabbing the key into the ignition.

She lowered her hands and her palm came down on the note he’d dropped on her lap. She could sense that if she kept picking at him, something might ignite between them, and she didn’t need that. But still—what had gotten into him? Was it simply her sharpness and impatience that morning? Their lack of leads? She squinted at him like she could decipher the reason for his mood from the calm planes of his face.

As he turned the key over and the engine purred on, he caught her hard gaze. His own eyes were shuttered, the curtains drawn, the lines around his eyes tight. He swallowed and he flexed his jaw as he turned away from her.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've been preoccupied with some personal concerns this week, so this chapter might not be as good as it could be, but hopefully it's still enjoyable in some way.

He knew he hadn’t been objective in his reaction to Elizabeth’s questions about Maggie. It was doubtful she was a suspect, but it was somewhat odd that she hadn’t remembered the incident with Logan until that morning she called. But people did strange things when they were in mourning. They forgot things, they had outbursts. But Elizabeth’s questions weren’t unreasonable. They were reasonable questions to be asked during the course of a murder investigation. In homicides, dozens of ridiculous, inane questions could be asked before getting to any that lead to anything substantial. Sometimes it was necessary to get through the ridiculous to get to the illuminating lines of inquiry.

It was just that—

A man having brought tragedy to his wife and young daughter because of something he might have been involved with was too familiar. Too close. It was hard to stay objective in a situation that mirrored his own experiences.

But partner or not, he couldn’t tell Elizabeth about that. There were very few people that knew about that night, and a woman he’d only known for around a week wasn’t going to be privy to one of the deepest sources of shame that he buried deep, deep down inside himself, wedged in one of the darker, least visited parts of his psyche. (Not that his pysche was a particularly pleasant, sunny thing in the first place.)

As they drove to the advertising company that Logan worked for, Elizabeth looked at him every so often—quick, flashing glances, snuck from the corners of her eyes, or from behind the fall of her hair as she tilted her head and brushed it aside. She probably thought that she was being subtle.

If she’d been with someone else, her technique might’ve worked.

But he’d spent much too much of his life watching others not to know what the drag of eyes felt like.

* * *

Liz had an aversion to advertising agencies. It wasn’t that she’d dated a slimy ad exec, or that her father had had a bad experience with them. She simply didn’t like the fact that it was an industry built up around gently manipulating others by choosing the optimum color palette for an ad campaign that made the viewer feel calm.

Even if Logan hand’t been a person of interest, she probably would’ve been inclined to dislike him simply based on his job. Blatant liars set her teeth on edge, but there was something about smiling, calm manipulators that made her want to break something.

As they walked into the building and up to the reception desk, she smoothed her hair back and squared her shoulders. A young woman with strawberry blond hair with a thin neck and a round face sat in front of a computer, hands a blur as she dutifully clacked something out. Her forehead was pinched, and her mouth was tight, but when she saw them, it was like there was a string attached to her face that pulled all her features up.

“Hello!” Her eyes flickered between the two of them, measuring and judging whether they were potential clientele. “What can I do for you today?”

“We understand Mr. Logan Shaw works here. He recently commissioned a man by the name of Chase Schneider to create a logo for one of his clients.” Before the woman could launch into a scripted speech about how that information was confidential, Liz pulled out her badge and held it up to the girl, the overhead light glinting off the badge. “Is Mr. Shaw in right now?”

The receptionist was struggling between maintaining her tight, drawn back smile, and a nervous clench of teeth at the sight of the badge. She swiveled in her chair, red nails flashing across the keys again, and she leaned forward to the screen. “He doesn’t appear to be in right now, but would you like me to tell him that you were here?”

“I think his number would be best,” Red said, leaning against the counter separating them from the receptionist.

The girl sucked at her bottom lip. “I’m not sure if…”

He smiled, close mouthed and welcoming, and Liz thought it was like watching the middle aged male equivalent of a female detective fluttering her eyelashes to get a suspect to tell them what she wanted to know. “This is simply routine, but I’m just thinking of the image of _your_ business. Seeing cops flashing around badges and asking questions wouldn’t be good for Mr. Shaw or the clientele of this business.”

He pushed away from the counter and held up his hands, eyes closed for a moment. “But if you think Mr. Shaw would prefer us to hold the discussion here, that’s perfectly fine. I’m sure you’re _very_ experienced and knowledgeable about what would be best in this situation.”

“Well…” The girl looked a bit less apprehensive, and her chair squeaked as she scooted away from the computer and her head dipped as she grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled something down with a pen. A moment later, she held it out. “There’s his number,” she said.

Liz was about to take it, but Red extended his arm and took the number from the girl while wearing that warm smile again. “Thank you,” he said, quietly. “It’s much appreciated.”

“…Yes, it is,” Liz said, the edge of her mouth dipping down for a moment before she tugged it back into a neutral expression. “Enjoy the rest of your day,” she said, and with a nod, walked toward the doors.

* * *

 

“Don’t you think you were laying it on a bit thick?” Liz pressed her fingers to her forehead as she pressed her elbow against the dashboard.

He held Logan’s number between the two of them, one hand on the steering wheel as they sat in the parking lot. “It got us what we needed, didn’t it?”

“I’m just glad you didn’t wink.” Liz pulled her fingers away and fastened her seatbelt, making sure that it didn’t twist.

“I hope you don’t believe I would do something as tacky as winking at a receptionist,” he said.

“Well, the depths of male depravity have yet to surprise me,” she said.

She was lying. She had been surprised a year and a half ago by the most important man in her life.

She wasn’t about to let herself be surprised again.

* * *

Logan agreed to meet them two hours later at a local park during one of his breaks. What she had heard of his voice on the other end of the line as he talked to Red was what she expected of an ad agent—tight and bright, the kind of voice that was used by government officials to reassure the public that everything was fine, when everything was in fact the opposite of fine.

As she and Red waited at the designated meeting spot—a picnic table, thankfully devoid of gum—some of the strangeness from earlier still hung between them. His silence was out of character. He was the kind of man that talked on and on about nothing in particular, just so long as it distracted from the original point, or to just under your skin. Whatever it was that had bothered him earlier was making him scratch at himself in silence, too preoccupied to be concerned with someone else dissecting his motives.

But soon enough, a car door slammed, and a man in a suit came walking up to them. His face was square, noise straight and smooth, and though there were streaks of gray along the edges of his black hair, there few lines on his skin. Logan was not a man that spent much time worrying, she thought. He probably had enough underlings to delegate his worrying to, letting the concern weather and mar their faces instead of his, like an organic, corporate version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Red slid up from the bench and leaned forward, jutting out a hand to Logan with a wide smile and a loose, easy posture. “Mr. Shaw!” he saw, as if the man was an old friend. “Good to see you. I’m sure your day is filled with many important things, so how courteous it is of you to meet us.”

Liz believed that a homicide investigation was probably on the bottom of his list of priorities.

“It’s no problem at all,” Logan said, and the words sounded scripted, like he was a robot programmed with twenty different phrases.

“I’m Detective Reddington,” he pressed a hand to his chest and waved the other and Liz, “and this is Detective Keen.”

Logan’s eyes wandered over to her, and they drifted over her face briefly, like she was something of little note. He flicked her a smile before sitting down next to Red, keeping space between them. “It’s good to meet both of you.”

“Likewise,” Liz said, and she hoped it sounded genuine. Neither Logan nor Red’s expression betrayed whether she convincing or not.

“We understand that Chase Schneider, the victim in our murder investigation, was hired by you to create a logo for an ad campaign commissioned by one of your clients,” she said, folding her hands across the table.

“Yes, that’s correct,” Logan said, straightening his tie.

So, it was going to be hard to get information from him, then. He had likely simply met with them in order to fulfill a duty. “His wife told us that you seemed…agitated that he seemed to be running over the deadline.”

There was a pause before he answered, but she noticed it. He saw through her sanitized words and knew what Maggie had told them. Of course, he probably wasn’t going to fess up to getting drunk and trying to punch someone that shown up with a bullet in his chest a week later.

“That’s correct. Our client put us on a tight schedule, so it was imperative that we had the logo as soon as possible, but Mr. Schneider was taking longer than we needed.” He scooted forward and slouched a bit, but it wasn’t relaxed. He was simply imitating the act of relaxation.

“What my partner means to say is that our victim’s wife told us that you got plastered one night and showed up to their house and tried to deck him. Come on Logan, you can tell me about it. I understand taking a bender.” He shook his head and laughed. “Goodness, if we have time, I’ll have to tell you about that night in October of ‘79. It was unforgettable.”

Her shoulders went stiff and she stared at him, fingers digging into the backs of her hands. He had done a similar thing with Blaze by antagonizing him to ingratiate him to her, but if Red had just set a simple fire in that situation, he had practically just poured gasoline all over their meeting with Logan and threw an entire matchbook down.

Logan’s neutral expression and forced slouch didn’t shift, but his eyes looked like cold marbles.  “I think Mrs. Schneider is mistaken. We did have a disagreement at his property, but I wasn’t intoxicated. I’d expect better from someone like you than to instantiate such things about me. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

Red placed a hand on Logan’s arm—just for a moment, but she saw the way his thick fingers dented the fabric, the way his cheek twitched. The touch wasn’t gentle or reassuring. He withdrew his hand. Logan’s jaw was set, stiff as steel.

“Slow _down_ , Mr. Shaw! We have plenty of time. I believe that you said your break was, what--?” He yanked back his sleeve and consulted his watch. “An hour long. We still have forty minutes, so sit down. Relax. Let’s just chat.”

But Logan began scooting away from them, smoothing down his suit jacket. “I’m not going to talk to you anymore.”

“You know, something else happened in ‘79 besides that night—Elizabeth, if Logan won’t listen, I’ll tell you about it on the way back—do you know what it was?” He leaned in toward Logan, the edge of his elbow leaning on the table, his hands loosely linked together.

“Mitch McMahan got into an argument and got into a scuffle with some of his friends. It wasn’t a big deal, really, but there were plenty of people to see it, and Mitch was a popular guy. But he was also quite unpopular in other circles. Well, anyway—Mitch got into this little scuffle, and by next weekend, what had been a scuffle turned into an imaginary, but _incredibly_ bloody fight, and it didn’t matter what the facts were or not. People chose the story they liked, and poor Mitch’s reputation was ruined. Dropped out of college, and I think he became a lobster fisherman in Alaska.” He scrunched up his lips. “I think he might actually still be there. I got a Christmas card from him once postmarked from Anchorage. But he never did come back to the East Coast because of what happened. It would be an _awful_ thing if your clients heard that you’ve got a bit of a temper in you. If they knew, I doubt they’d want to hire you out of fear that you’d sock them in the nose.”

Then, he patted Logan on the arm again, firm and heavy, wearing a smile the most cunning of snakes would've been proud of. Logan’s neutral expression broke, and he was frowning, body curling away from Red. “I could smear your reputation if I let your superior know about your threats toward me. I could even sue you.”

“My reputation was sullied long, _long_ ago, Mr. Shaw. And you can sue me if you want, but are you willing to risk a pair of your dirty boxers coming out in the wash during the long, drawn out court process?” He was no longer smiling.

During the entire exchange, Liz was on the edge of intervening, of interjecting and keeping Red from burning the whole conversation to the ground, but he navigated the entire process as if he was walking on the very edge of a narrowing, crumbling path of a mountain as surefooted and confident as any seasoned mountaineer.

Logan’s hands curled in his lap like stiff claws. “What do you want?”

“If your schedule permits it, I’d like you to fit us into your schedule tomorrow to drop by for a little chat at our interrogation room. Do you think you could get that nice receptionist of yours to pencil us in?” He tapped one finger against his wrist, head tilted to the side.

Logan’s hands uncurled and they lay flat as boards against his legs. He straightened and nodded with one mechanical jerk of his head. “Yes, I think we could do that,” he said, words clipped. “I’ll tell you what you want, as long as you don’t try to go rumor mongering.”

Liz wanted to say it wasn’t a rumor if it was true, but she kept her mouth shut.

“Excellent! I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement. Would you like us to walk you to your car?” Red started to rise, but Logan held out a hand, body angling away from him again.

“Thank you for the offer, but I can take care of myself. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He peeled off the bench and ran a hand over the black mass of his hair.

Liz watched him go, and she drummed her fingers against her forearm, Red’s face blurry in the corner of her eye. “Well, that was quite the performance.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” He smile was smudgy in her vision.

“Yes, but let’s talk about our strategy tomorrow, okay? I think we’d be more effective together, rather than just having you put on an impromptu one man show.” She slid her arms off the table and before she could stand, he was next to her, offering a hand to help her up. She stared at it for a moment before taking it and allowing him to haul her to her feet.

“Together, then," he said. 


	10. Chapter 10

“How are we gonna go at this?”

Liz watched Logan behind the glass of the integration room like he was wild animal whose behavior she was observing. His back was straight against the chair, hands folded along the edge of the table, and seemed as if he was waiting for a meeting to start rather than waiting to be questioned about a murder.

“I’ve already set myself up as the unethical, aggressive one out of the two of us, so I’d say that my role here is clear.” Red’s profile was turned to her, jaw working as he grated his teeth together. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, but rather a vest over a white dress shirt. She wondered if there was any meaning behind his clothing choice aside from the fact that that was what he felt like putting on that day.

“Yeah, but I doubt I can get much from him either. I’m sure you saw the way he looked at me—he barely paid any attention to me. He was dismissive.” She pressed her hands against the sill of the glass, one leg stretched out behind her. Logan stretched his neck, but remained otherwise still.

“ _Exactly_.” He smiled at her and crossed his arms, muscles shifting under the white shirt as he did. She hadn’t noticed how…robust he was beneath the jackets and suits he typically wore. But his physique wasn’t surprising, she supposed, considering that he had spent years in law enforcement, which required some amount of athleticism, the thickness around his middle not withstanding. She flicked her eyes away from his shoulders and to his face.

“What’s your point?” Liz leaned her head toward him, hair falling into her eyes.

“As you said, Mr. Shaw finds you to be inconsequential, so telling you his dirty little secrets isn’t going to seem high stakes to him, even with me in the room.” He jerked his head toward Logan, who was still staring forward. “Maybe he won’t think you’re on his side, but he’ll at least know there’s one person in there that’s probably impartial.”

“And maybe he’ll think that I’m the more conservative of the two of us, and more likely to reign you in if you start getting too high and mighty.” She pulled her hands off the sill and stood straight, flexing her hands.

Red uncrossed his arms and put the tips of his fingers against her shoulder. “You ready?”

She nodded sharply and flashed a quick smile at him. “Yep.”

His own smile unfurled slowly. “Well, let’s go then.”

His hand was on her shoulder, a gentle pressure guiding her to the door until she turned the knob.

* * *

“ _Logan_!” Red almost shouted, arms spread as he entered into the interrogation room.

As Liz came around the table, she caught the momentary pinched look on Logan’s face when Red enthusiastically greeted him. She pulled the chair out across from Logan and tried to keep it from scraping. Red slapped down a file folder next to her and dragged his chair out, the feet squealing and scraping. Logan kept his hands folded. His hair looked particularly gelled and styled that day, the gray at his temples no longer present. She had to press her lips together to keep from smiling as she imagined him putting dye into his hair that morning, preparing for a session of questioning like he might be preparing for a date. Red slumped back a bit in his chair, hands folded across his stomach, eyebrows raised as he smiled at Logan.

“Thank you for agreeing to talk to us today, Mr. Shaw. We appreciate your cooperation with this case.” She pulled the case file on Chase closer to her, and she wished it didn’t feel so thin.

Logan spread his hands in front of him. “But of course. I’m all too happy to tell the police whatever they need to know.”

Red’s eyes flicked to her, mouth curling, pressing his tongue against his cheek. She didn’t return the look. The important thing was to stick to the loose script—she playing the straight, by the book good girl to Red’s jaded, unscrupulous cop.

“Now, Mrs. Schneider told us that there was an incident between you and her husband last week. She told us that the problem was precipitated by him not turning in a project in on time?” She flipped the file open to a page that contained a written report of the information Maggie had given them.

“Correct. As I told you yesterday, the client I’m working with at the moment has very strict timetables, and we must get everything to them in on time. This wasn’t the only time that Mr. Schneider had been off schedule. He’d been late on the previous logo we assigned him.” He shook his head.

“If he had been late before, why did you commission him again?” She pulled a pen off the file uncapped it.

“The client liked what he did, so they wanted us to use him again, saying that the two day delay was all right as long as his work was as good as it was before, so I commissioned him a second time. I gave him the two days, but even by then he wasn’t very far into it the logo. After a while, the client really started to get on my case about him getting it in on time.” Logan shifted in his chair and spread one arm across the back of it. “You can understand the difficult position I was in.”

Red was leaning his elbow on the table, hand pressed against his cheek, eyelids lowered in a unsympathetic look. “Yes, very trying indeed, I’m sure. So trying in fact that you weren’t going gray, but rather, your hair was reverse aging itself.”

 _So_ , Liz thought, _he’d noticed Logan’s dye job too_. Logan kept his expression neutral and kept looking at her, not allowing himself to react.

“Okay,” she sighed more deeply than necessary, giving a glance to Red. “Then what did you do last Wednesday?”

Logan dragged his arm off the back of the chair and leaned forward, pressing his hands together as he leaned his forehead against the tips of his fingers. He shook his head, deeply frowning. “I’m not proud to say it, but I did drink a bit too much on Wednesday evening, and my temper got the better of me. I only meant to go to his house to genially discuss the issue of his being late, but…” he blew out a breath, folded his hands together, setting his chin on his knuckles. To Liz, the entire thing looked like bad acting. She’d seen better in one of Jeremy’s student films.

“As I said, my temper got the better of me, and things got heated, and I feigned a punch at Mr. Schneider, but nothing more than that happened,” he finished, punctuating it with a nod.

“ _Well,_ ” Red laughed, shoulders shaking. “Mr. Shaw, I really think you should run for some political position, because you have such an intrinsic talent for making something unsavory sound inconsequential. Truly, truly, I take my hat off to you, sir.” He pantomimed removing the fedora that he occasionally wore.

“It’s the _truth,_ Detective Reddington.” Logan lowered his hands. “What more do you want me to say?”

“Well, I’d like to know where you were this Tuesday morning at 7:30, though I suspect you might not want to tell us that without a lawyer present.” He started to take the case file from Liz to write down a statement, but she kept it pinned down with one hand. At the mention of the lawyer, she bumped the tip of his shoe underneath the table with her foot. They were playing roles, but he didn’t need to make the situation any worse by putting thoughts of lawyers into Logan’s head.

“Mr. Shaw, while I rarely agree with my partner, I’m sure you can appreciate that it is in both of our best interests for you to answer his question. You may, of course, call a lawyer if you’d like to, but I’m sure we both know that you have no reason to do so.” She needed him to trust her—or at least, find her to be fair.

“I was at a meeting at 7:30,” Logan said, but he didn’t say it to her. His eyes were on Red. “You can talk to the receptionist. She can give you a list of everyone that was there if you want to talk to them, as well as a record of the e-mail that was sent out the day before telling everyone to come to the meeting.”

“You just have an answer for everything, don’t you?” Red’s voice was quiet. It was an undisguised challenge.

Liz bumped her foot against his again, head whipping to face him. She wasn’t acting then. Why was he pushing Logan further? He gave them the information that they needed. There was no reason to make him any angrier than he already was.

Logan’s narrow nostrils flared. He smiled the perfect sort of smile that only came out of boxes of whitening strips and hours in a dentist’s chair. “Why, yes, in fact I do, Mr. Reddington. As I said, I’m perfectly happy to assist your investigation, so I’ll gladly tell you about Mr. Schneider’s strange habits of going into an old office building in a not-so-good part of town, but if you’re not interested…” He raised his hands in the air.

“We are, of course. We’ll look into whatever you give us. What did you see?” She was twisting the pen so quickly between her fingers that her skin was growing warm. It was Red’s turn to nudge her foot, and as he did, his eyes flicked to her, then to her hands twisting the pen around. She put the pen down—he was right. Seeming overly interested in Logan’s lead wasn’t a good idea, especially if he ended up lying.

“I travel around town quite often due to the nature of my job, and at least four times I saw Mr. Schneider enter into an older office building. It’s run down, and several of the floors aren’t occupied. There a few residential apartments on the very top floors, but I don’t know if they’re occupied. Whatever he was doing there, he didn’t seem to want to be recognized, because he always wore a wide hat and a jacket with a large collar. I can give you the address of the building if you want—I travel past it fairly often for work.” He gestured toward the open file folder.

Liz wanted to whip out a piece of paper, throw the pen into Logan’s hands and demand he write the address that second, because finally, they had something more substantial than the sparse crime scene evidence and the non-existent information about Chase’s behavior in his last days. But she managed to restrain herself.

Instead, she pulled a blank piece of paper out of the case file and slid the pen and paper over to Logan with a smile. “Take all the time you need.”

* * *

From the entrance of the hallway that lead to the interrogation room, Liz watched Logan go, a black fading, lean figure in his suit, arms barely moving at his sides, his reflection narrowed and warped in the glass doors he walked toward.

“That went well,” Red said from beside her.

“Yeah, it did, but I could’ve done without you bringing up lawyers.” It still bothered her. Maybe he had simply said it just to see what threats landed and made Logan talk, but it had been risky.

“Oh, but if I hadn’t brought it up, then the delightful little game of footsie that we played wouldn’t have happened.” His eyes slid to her in a private look.

She breathed in. “Do you mind telling me why you were challenging him at the end there?” It was best to leave his flirtatious comments unaddressed for the moment. She didn’t need to get sidetracked into a discussion that could be saved for another time.

“I could tell he was holding something back. Men like him enjoy proving something, so what better way to get him to reveal what we needed by giving him something to prove?” He had turned to the trail that Logan had just walked, as if he could see some unseen filth that the slimy ad agent had oozed over the tiled floor.

“That was…”

It was _gutsy_.

It was _reckless_.

It was _**smart**_.

“A good idea,” Liz said, settling on something neutral.

His smile told her that he knew what she really meant. “Of course it was. I was the one that came up with it, after all, and my ideas do tend to be good ones.” He set his hand on her shoulder for the second time that day, and when he did, she tried not to flinch. It wasn’t that the touch was unwanted, but she hadn’t expected it somehow.

“But don’t discount yourself either, Elizabeth. You did well. You committed to our plan, and you followed through with it. You were so straight laced that I thought I was witnessing Donald’s consciousness somehow possessing your mind.”

She broke into a grin, bending over in a laugh, and his hand slid off her shoulder. “Please, don’t suggest that. I can’t afford an exorcist on my budget!”

“Ah, well you’re in luck, because I just so happen to know a priest that has performed exorcism before. He also happens to owe me a favor, so if this terrible thing happens to you again, I’ll be sure to call him.” His expression was entirely solemn.

“Come on,” she said, swallowing back another laugh. “We need to see a man about a suspicious office building.”

* * *

The stairs groaned with each step she took, like the building was so old that it was in pain, and each push of her foot against the stairs pressed deep into the nerve endings of the building and made it whine. Though it was daytime, there was no light in the stairwell—the only brightness came from the light bulb on the landing and on the top of the stairs, so she felt like she was walking through a black tunnel, heading toward some unknown light source. She kept her on hand on the railing, but didn’t press down hard, lest she come away with her hand impaled with splinters. Red walked ahead of her, and she resisted grabbing onto the back of his jacket to keep herself steady as she walked.

Finally, they came to the level of the building that housed the empty floor that the building’s owner, Dario, had informed them that Chase came up to. Dario himself stood there, a few feet away from the dim light bulb, skin sheened green by the walls, brown hair grown long and falling to his shoulders. He glanced between them, fidgeting with the keys, face pinched at the sight of police. He was a short, but lean man with a long neck and high cheekbones that reminded her of a ferret that wanted nothing more than to jump down into a tunnel.

“Thank you for letting us come here,” Liz said to him. She didn’t need him backing out at the last second and demanding that they could only return with a warrant in hand. “You said you’d tell us more once we got here?”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to tell you on the phone because people might be listening, you know. Normally I wouldn’t talk to people like you because you’re with—”

“The Man?” Red suggested. She curled her hand at her side, keeping herself from pressing the tip of her shoe against his. They didn’t have a table to hide behind anymore.

Dario pointed a finger at him, three fingers still curled around the keys. They jangled together. “Call it that if you want, but I’m being serious here. I don’t like you, but your lady friend seems clean, but like I said, mainly I’m letting you come here because Rick was a good guy. I want to see whoever killed him gets what’s coming.”

“Err—Rick? Sir, I thought you knew his name was Chase Schneider.” Had Logan sent them on a false lead out of spite? Or had he mistaken another man that frequented the building for Chase?

“Well, _obviously_ his name wasn’t really Rick. We don’t ask questions like that here.” He gestured to the dark, empty level of offices, all barren and dusty, the frosted glass of the doors covered in a greasy film.

“Just so we don’t all end up wasting our time, may I ask if this was ‘Rick’?” Red removed a photo from his pocket and held it out to Dario. It was a close up of Chase’s face from the crime scene, his features drained of color, a small line of blood on his lips, eyes staring out at a trash can.

Dario blew out a breath, dragging one hand through the mess of his hair. “Yeah. That was Rick. …Come on, follow me. I’ll explain what he came here for.” He turned around and arced his arm for them to follow.

He led them down the hall of empty office rooms, a few with cracks across the corners of the glass, like an iced over pond melting and splitting with the brush of the coming heat of spring. One door had a label with a name written on it, but the label was curling in on itself and falling apart, and all that remained of the name was “Joh”. Dario stopped at the second to last door, and he fumbled with the mass of keys.

“He came here one day saying he wanted to rent an office for its mail slot—and nothing else. He said he sometimes got confidential mail, and he’d had troubles with neighbors going through his mail in the past, so he wanted a place to pick up letters and packages without worrying about that.” He jabbed the key into the lock, and with some jiggling, the door came open. “I said yes, of course. He was a kindred spirit.”

“I haven’t rented out an office room in forever, but I regularly rent out the apartments above to people that want their private business private. They know I’m not gonna tell, so it’s not like Rick was out of the ordinary here.” He backed away from the door, hands pushed into his pockets, head bowed, shoulders pulled forward. “Anyway, you can look through whatever he left behind, but I doubt there’s much if he’s as secretive as he seemed to be.”

Liz went through the door first, and she almost slipped on a letter that was at the entrance. She bent down, picked it up and turned it over in her hands as she stood, eyebrows raised as she turned to Red. He shrugged and took it from her. As he tore it open, she ventured further into the room, and for a moment she felt as if she was an urban explorer traipsing through a building she shouldn’t be in.

There was nothing in the office aside from a desk that was pushed up against the back wall, a lamp sitting on its corner, draped with veils of gauzy webbing that must have been created by generations of spiders—all living and dying, consuming and being consumed on the slick landscape of that single lamp. If Chase had touched the desk, it wouldn’t have been much, because the entire surface of it had turned gray, not a streak of finger or hand prints on it.

But the filing cabinet shoved against the wall across from the desk looked like it had been used. It was still dusty, but it was simply dust that came from a week or two’s lack of use, not the residue of months and years of abandonment. She shoved her hands into her pockets to pull on gloves, but she found that there was nothing in her pockets besides her keys. Liz screwed her eyes shut. What sort of idiotic, inexperienced mistake was it to forget gloves when she knew she would probably be handling evidence?

“…Hey, Red?” she asked, voice strained. They were in a far better place than they had been when they first met, but it was still early on in their partnership. There were all sorts of opportunities for him to begin to intensely dislike her again, and forgetting something as obvious as gloves seemed like a good enough reason for him to resume his disdain.

“Hm?” he mumbled, sounding distracted, probably reading through the letter.

“I forgot my gloves. It was a dumb mistake, but—”

He walked over to her next to the filing cabinet and pulled his own gloves out of his pocket and extended them to her. He didn’t smile, but he didn’t look disappointed either. “You can use mine.”

“Um, thanks,” she said, not looking at him as she took the gloves from him and pulled them over her hands. As expected, the were too large for her,--he tips of the fingers flopping, the leather laying loose over her palms—but they would suffice.

Liz yanked the gloves up her wrists and opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet, figuring there was no reason not to start from the top and work her way down. There was nothing in it aside from several documents and a scrap of paper sitting next to it. Her brow furrowed and she reached into the drawer, gloves sliding down over her hands again. She shuffled through the documents, and the furrow only grew deeper.

“I think you’ll want to see this,” she said, eyes widening.

“And I think you’ll want to see what I have, but let’s see which one turns out to be the most enlightening,” he said, and leaned over her shoulder, breath warm on her cheek.

She didn’t lean away. “I don’t know if it’s enlightening. I’m actually pretty sure it just made all of this even more complicated.”

The document proclaimed that, nine years ago, Shane Locke had legally changed his name to Chase Schneider. The separate scrap of paper had nothing professional about it—it just looked a piece of notebook paper folded over, yellowed with years, but the cramped writing on it was Chase’s. All it said was, _Lionel Leane_.

“Well, I think that beats my poor, pathetic little letter.”

“It’s not yours, anyway. I found it first,” she said, fingers numb. Unable to fully process what their case had just turned into the moment she opened the drawer, she turned to humor.

“Allow me this one victory,” he said, sounding just as dazed as she was.

“Sure,” she told him.

Liz wasn’t certain that what she’d found was much of a victory at all.


	11. Chapter 11

Though they were driving around, trying to find a small place to eat and regroup, Liz was paying little attention to the buildings that whirled by. Instead, she kept glancing at the evidence bags as she ran her hand through her hair, upper lip pressed against her lower.

“If you keep doing that, you’re going to thin your hair,” Red said, taking a detour onto a side road.

There was a remark she could’ve made about whether or not he was a worrier when he was younger, which contributed to his current lack of hair, but her mind was far too occupied with the evidence they’d just found, and didn’t have the wherewithal to completely form such a joke. She dropped her hand from her hair and it fell onto the car door.

“I suppose its possible that Chase changed his name because he didn’t like his old one, and this just all seems sinister in light of his death. But if it was as simple as that, would he really have kept the records of his name change in some old office room that he rented under a fake name? This guy had a thing for privacy and fake names. I don’t think it’s innocent.” She gnawed on the tip of her thumb. She knew she was rambling, asking herself questions and answering them without giving Red a chance to give his own input, but her mind and mouth were moving too fast to pause.

A car next to them honked as Red turned into the next lane. He didn’t even give the belligerent driver of the other car the courtesy of a glance in the rear view mirror—that’s how little concerned he seemed to be of the other person’s opinion of him. That moment was perhaps a succinct summary of his attitude toward most people’s personal views of him.

“Everyone has their secrets, but most people don’t tend to go to the trouble of hiding those in a building owned by a greasy conspiracy theorist. Most just keep them in their heads, or at the most, hidden in the attic in a damp cardboard box.” His head turned as he watched a small cafe go by. It had been squeezed in between a dry cleaner’s and a noodle shop.

“That’s what I’m saying. Maybe he changed his name because he was trying to get away from something in his old life, and maybe those old problems caught up with him.” Red glanced at her, eyes flicking to her thumb resting against her bottom lip. Liz pulled it away lest he make a comment about giving herself hangnails.

“With the details we know about his life, it seems that the risk factors in his victimology were been low. He rarely left the house unless it was to go to his little ghost address, or to a meeting with a client. He lead a mind numbingly dull, isolated, middle class existence. By all accounts, he was more in danger of getting tangled up in his computer cords and accidentally strangling himself with them than getting murdered. Yet the poor bastard found himself shot and possibly robbed in an alley.” Red slowed his speed a bit and pursed his lips. “Sounds like a morbid story problem that would be on a college statistics test.”

She turned in the seat and leaned towards him, straining against the seat belt, as he started in on risk factor and victomology—he was speaking her language. “Chase was fiercely cautious. Why would he go into an alley early in the morning— _alone_? It’s not like he _knew_ it was a relatively safe part of D.C., and even if he knew it was, with the kind of person he seemed to be, he still would’ve avoided that situation unless there was some reason he _had_ to be there. It seems like a weird place to meet a client.”

His fingers loosened around the steering wheel and a smile crossed his face, wide and maybe a bit proud. At least, she wanted to believe that it was proud. She still didn’t feel the need for validation, but she did feel the need to connect with someone that understood what she was talking about. Liz had met intelligent officers while she was in uniform, but most of them didn’t see the use for her profiling skills in the cases they’d worked. She had used some of those skills to talk a culprit down, but there had rarely been a point in explaining criminal motivations or risk factors to the other officers, so the chance to connect with someone that saw worth in her ideas was somewhat thrilling.

“Perhaps the killer was an old college roommate angry that Chase-nee-Shane had stolen his girlfriend during midterms.”

She snorted at the clearly ridiculous suggestion. “Are you just projecting?”

“ _Elizabeth_ , I’m disappointed that you think that any of my roommates measured up to me in any way,” he said, but he was only half-paying attention to her. He was leaning forward, scanning the horizon as he made another turn.

“Yeah, sure, you were a heartbreaker in college. I know the sort of story yours probably is.” Liz waved a hand at him. It wasn’t that she didn’t doubt it, but she wasn’t particularly in the mood to hear him launch into a story about his twenty-something, youthful exploits with women. His hints toward his current love life were enough without colorful college stories.

After a moment, he pulled into a small diner with only two other cars parked in front of it. The location made sense, she thought. It was small and quiet, just the place in order for them to discuss their findings.

“My daughter probably would like this place. We used to—” But then his eyes flashed to her, and for a moment, they were filled with what might have been dismay.

Liz didn’t have time to try to analyze what he was feeling, because she was still processing his casual mention of a daughter. She never would have pegged him as someone with a child—she’d seen him as the perpetual bachelor, forever sewing his wild oats, content with never settling down. Scenarios flicked through her mind. Was the child the product of a previous relationship? A girlfriend he’d been serious with when he was young, but when the child had come along, reality had settled in and things became hard? Was the daughter the accident of a one night stand? Or—

Was she from a marriage gone awry?

It wasn’t her place to ask. She would continue to privately speculate, but Liz knew what it was to have secrets buried deep, wedged and pressed down beneath layers of memories and trauma, only telling a very small, select few. He could have his secret if that’s what he wanted to do. But still, why had he brought his daughter up? Was he so lost in thinking about college and the past that he’d let the detail slip?

“Let’s head in,” she said, gently picking up the evidence bags.

The skin under his left eye twitched—a nervous habit that signaled a break in composure, she was learning—but he nodded, perhaps grateful that she wasn’t prodding at his slip up.

* * *

Liz turned over the evidence bag in her hand that contained the scrap of paper with Lionel’s name on it. She sipped at the coffee she’d ordered.

“ ‘Lionel Leane’. Why does that sound familiar?” She put it down in the middle of the table and pushed it over to him with her index finger, making sure not to press down on the delicate paper.

“Are you an unsolved crime enthusiast?” He picked up a knife and cut into the butter next to them, spreading a swathe of it on the bagel he’d ordered. She was somewhat disappointed he hadn’t ordered a doughnut. It was a cliche, of course, but it would’ve given her some ammunition to use against him for future teasing.

She pressed her arms against the table and spread her hands. “I like them, and I read up on them, but I don’t think I’m obsessed with them.”

“Have you ever heard of The Somerton Man?” He took a bite of the bagel and pushed the bag back over to her.

“Sure. A guy was found dead on a beach in Australia in 1948, but he was never identified. There were a lot of weird things about the case, like he cut all the tags out of his clothes, a possible secret code, and a strange assortment of items in his suitcase.”

“You don’t need to recite the details to me. I _do_ know the case. That’s why I was asking if you did.” He put the knife down.

The comment sounded almost like something he would’ve said to her before their deal to tolerate each other—snide and condescending, annoyed she’d wasted his time with redundant information he already knew. Was Red falling back into that old dynamic because he’d been thrown off kilter by revealing he had a daughter, or was she simply misreading the situation?

“I was just laying it all out to make sure we were on the same page and I had all the details right,” she said, opting for a neutral answer. She didn’t need to have a knee jerk reaction to his sharp comment and set everything on fire for no reason.

Red was silent for a moment and looked down at the table. “Lionel Leane was one of the initial investigators on the case,” he said, and picked up the bag. “It’s also the alias of an online identity broker that came to my attention a few years ago on a case that I was working.”

“…Chase changed his name and had the name of an identity thief—”

“Identity _broker_ ,” Red corrected her, pointing the bag in her direction. “Lionel Leane doesn’t use the identities for himself. He sells them to others.”

She let out a shallow breath. She didn’t enjoy being interrupted, but semantics were important when discussing cases. “Okay, he had the name of an identity _broker_ in a drawer along with the proof of his name change,” Liz pronounced it clearly and dragged out the _r_. “Those two things don’t seem like a coincidence.”

“No, they don’t. But unfortunately, like the those that worked on the Somerton case, we have many disparate pieces of evidence that mean something, and very little understanding of what they mean. We could speculate for hours, but I’m a believer in proper time management. Let the internet sleuths be the ones to debate about whether it was the CIA or the New World Order that killed our man.” He considered the evidence bag, flipping it over in his hands, and as he looked up, she thought he was going to toss it at her, but he just put it back down on the table.

“You think internet detectives are already on top of this?” Liz pulled the bag closer to her. In her interest of unsolved cases, she’d run into those sorts of websites and forums before. Some of the theories were reasonable, but most of them ran into the outlandish, frequently favoring theories of spies and spinning tales of sordid affairs and poisonings and evil family members out of thin air without any sort of evidence.

Red chewed at the bagel and glanced at her coffee. “Are you certain you don’t want anything? I haven’t seen you eat anything all day.”

“Your concern is _touching_ , but caffeine is good enough for me.” She saluted him with the coffee, and as she did, it sloshed against the sides, threatening to spill down her black shirt.

He shrugged and picked up a napkin, wiping his fingers on it. “In answer to your earlier question—no, not yet, but I’m almost certain that once the strange details of this case begin to reach reporters, the online detectives will latch onto it like sharks that smelled blood. It has all the hallmarks that draws them to it—an unknown murderer and strange clues that don’t add up at all. ”

“Well, maybe once we run his name through the system we’ll have more information about what all this means.” She waved her hands over the protected scrap of paper.

He made a sympathetic face, like she’d just said something unbearably naive. “It would be nice, but the stars don’t seem to be aligned in our favor at the moment.”

* * *

When Liz walked into the station the next morning, she almost didn’t want to know the results of the cyber crime division's research into Shane Locke. After she and Red had returned from Germantown once again, they handed the evidence off to Cyber, and she spent the rest of the afternoon filing reports about their findings so far. As she’d typed at her laptop, she felt more at ease than the first time she’d typed at their shared desk.

Gone was the fury, and the stabbing, pecking jabs of her fingers against the keys as she filed reports that he foisted onto her. Her love for paperwork hadn’t increased, but her spine had curled forward, and she typed without resentment for the man beside her. They simply typed in silence, talking every so often to get input from the other on wording or a detail that was or was not relevant. She almost hadn’t wanted to go home. She would’ve wanted to go home more if she still owned Hudson, but she had to give him to a friend after the divorce. Hotels weren’t exactly friendly toward dogs, and she wouldn’t have been able to properly care for him with the mindset she was in.

Returning home the previous night only made her worries about Cyber’s findings grow, and by the time she walked in, it was the only thing on her mind. So when there was a young, dark haired man she’d never seen before standing at her and Red’s desk, she all but sprinted the length of the room.

When she came up next to the man—admittedly, perhaps a bit too closely—he flinched away, blinking, hands growing tighter around the papers he held.

“Don’t be afraid of Detective Keen, Aram. I’m fairly certain that she doesn’t bite unless she’s asked to.” Red smiled over at her, chair swiveling in her direction. “But you might want to deliver your news in the gentlest terms possible, as it does appear likely that her head might explode after she hears your information, and it really would be an inconvenience to clean up brain matter this early in the morning.”

“Detective Keen! I’m glad to finally meet you. I heard about your promotion from one of the uniforms. Congratulations! I suppose it’s a bit late for congratulations, but still.” The man that had been identified as Aram still seemed out of his environment—which was probably a room filled with computers, not surrounded by shrewd homicide detectives—but at least he didn’t seem unnerved by her anymore.

Liz twitched a smile at him. “Thank you. So…Reddington said that you have something to tell me?”

His smile fell, and he glanced down at his papers, then back over to Red, perhaps remembering Red’s comment about her having a nuclear meltdown over his bad news. “Well, I did research on Shane Locke, checking to see if there was any criminal history, or any sort of background at all. It turns out that, well—” He tapped a finger against the top of the papers.

She put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “It turns out _that_ …?”

“It turns out that Shane Locke died in 1979 in a car accident in Oregon. Whoever your victim was…he wasn’t Shane Locke.” Aram grimaced and half reached out a hand to extend the papers to her, but pulled them back.

Her hands slid off her hips. She pressed her eyes together, silver points of light exploding behind her eyelids. She flicked them open again. “He’s not Chase Schneider, Shane Locke, or Rick-whoever. Our victim is a _John Doe_?”

“…Yes?” Aram sounded like he was trying not to make it sound like a question, but it still came out that way.

Red spread his arms and pressed the tip of his shoe again the floor to keep the chair from moving. “Not only did the stars align against us, I believe they just went supernova.”

“Supernovas are pretty. This isn’t.” It was worse than just “ugly”. The new revelation had moved their case beyond strange or frustrating. Before, even with the scant evidence and no identified killer, at least they’d had a name and a list of behaviors and facts to analyze. Now, a vast, hazy void stretched out in front of them, filled with no past and no name for the man that had once been Chase.

She reached for the papers, and Aram pulled his hand away like they were burning him and he was glad to be rid of the pain. It took much of her willpower not the fling the papers across the room and yell at them. Liz sank down into her chair, grip wrinkling the papers.

“That’s everything I had. I need to get back to something else I’m working on,” Aram said, taking a step back, jerking a thumb behind him. “But I’ll come back to tell you if I found anything else.”

“Okay, thanks,” she said, but she wasn’t able to smile or even nod at him. Her fingers felt numb.

“At least it’s clearer why he had Leane’s name in the drawer along with the documents.” Red craned his neck over to her. Was he trying to find a silver lining, or was he just trying to pacify her so that she would be clear headed enough to move forward with the investigation?

“Maybe his prints or DNA are in the system.” She set the papers down. “His dental records have to be in there at least, right? He can’t _completely_ be a ghost.”

Red half-parted his mouth, and as she said it, they both knew that it was in fact possible that he was little better than a ghost. Any theory was almost credible at the moment. John Doe could’ve been one of the Missing Missing—someone who had never been formerly reported as missing for any number of reasons. He could’ve been someone running from his past, perhaps something criminal, which would’ve lined up with purchasing a false identity on the internet. If he had a criminal past, his risk factors would’ve been higher than they originally believed, even with the private, mild life he’d been living in Germantown.

“Why did he even have those in a drawer? If he was living a new life in Maryland, wouldn’t he want any connections or evidence of his old life to be destroyed? Why not just keep the Shane Locke name instead of changing it to Chase Schneider? And we still don’t know who _M_ is.” She dropped the papers on the desk and shoved them, sliding them over to Red. He caught them under two fingers before they fell off the desk. Liz pressed her cheek into the heel of her palm.

His eyes were lowered to the papers, squinting down at them. “We at least know that _M_ likely gave our man of a thousand names 30,000 dollars. Are you forgetting the letter we found?”

She almost _had_ forgotten it. Everything else had seemed weightier, but anything that could clear the case up at all was something she needed to grasp onto. She lifted her cheek from her hand. “What about it?”

“It had no return address or signature, but it said, ‘Did the money help?’ It was dated the day after Chase’s death.”

Liz’s cheek fell back down onto her palm, and her eyes drifted closed again. Her chest lifted in a deep sigh. “That just confirms what we already know. _M_ could be a friend, or he could even be the killer. For all we know he planted the letter to give us false evidence and distract us! Nothing we find helps. All of it just makes all of this worse.”

“Elizabeth,” Red said, and the tips of his fingers brushed against her free hand that lay against the desk.

Her eyes flicked open as the weight of his hand pressed over hers. “Four years ago, Donald and I responded to a call of a human skeleton found under a house when it was being torn down. The only thing that could be determined was that the skeleton was of a teenage girl that died about fifteen years prior to her unearthing, and she’d been killed by a blow to back of the head.”

His gaze flicked up, face tensing as his eyes roamed the blank air, like a movie was playing that only he could see. “There was no evidence, no clues. No identification from DNA or dental records. It was so…” he bit down on half his lower lip, smile curling up as he shook his head. “ _Infuriating_. I spent many nights going over possible scenarios—had she been accidentally killed and the perpetrator became frightened and buried her to avoid consequences? Was she killed in cold blood? Was it done by a stranger or someone she knew? Was it a rock that killed her? A brick? And then of course, I wondered who she had been, who had missed her--if anyone. Did she want to go to college? Were her parents still looking for her?”

He turned back to her, fingers curling around her hand. “Anyone could drive themselves insane wondering over all of that. In the end, all I could do was work with the evidence at hand, but it simply wasn’t enough. Some cases you can solve, some you can’t. But you learn to live with the ghosts of the unsolved ones and just keep moving on to the next case.”

She blinked at him and swallowed. Liz thought she understood what he was saying—getting caught up in the case and becoming angry and emotional wasn’t going to help them. In fact, it could hinder her abilities to solve it. All she could do was her best. If she had learned to live with unsatisfactory answers regarding her parents’ deaths, she could learn to live with Chase Schneider’s death being a cold case if that’s what it came down to.

She wrapped her fingers around his for a moment before pulling away. “We have no idea who M is, or even where they might be living, so let’s go after the Lionel Leane angle for now. At least we know some things about him.”

He briefly closed his eyes and nodded. “I know where the records are for the old case that I worked on that Leane came up in. I can dig them up for you if you’d like.”

Liz pulled her chair closer to him. There was no use getting excited in a lead that might not end up helping at all, but at least they hadn’t run into a dead end with Leane yet. “That would be fantastic. Thank you.”

“Ah, one more thing, lest you completely dismiss my letter—”

“The letter _I_ slipped on.” She raised an eyebrow at him.

He rolled his eyes and raised his hands in the air. “— _Your_ letter. We can get it forensically analyzed and see if there are any usable prints on it, or if we can get a DNA match off the saliva used to seal the envelop.”

“That’s…also a good idea,” she said. It was unlikely that the prints off the letter would be usable, especially since she’d stepped on the letter and they’d both handled it, but the saliva could actually yield something.

“You said that yesterday. If you want to flatter me, you’ll need to add some new lines to your playbook.” He patted her on the arm. “Now, I’ll see about finding those records for you.”

* * *

When he came up behind Aram and the other man spun around in his chair, Red thought that the chair might make several revolutions, and then he’d be saddled with a dizzy cyber crimes analyst, and that just wouldn’t do.

“Detective Reddington. Is there something you need? I didn’t leave anything out of my report, if that’s what you’re wondering.” His eyebrows knitted together, and one hand was pressed against the desk behind him. Aram seemed to view Red with a mix of respect and fear, which was fairly conducive to easily getting information that he needed that the other members of Cyber might not technically think was ethical.

“The report was fine, but I do actually need something else from you.” He placed his hands behind his back and took a step closer. “Two things, actually. The first is that I would like you to give me a report on everything that’s known about Lionel Leane.”

Aram swallowed. “And the second thing?”

“ _Ah_! Yes, that. Well, it isn’t actually related to _this_ case, but rather one that I was involved with years ago. There was a fire in Nebraska in 1978, and I would like you to see if you could find photographs of the gas can at the scene. I couldn’t find anything in the old news papers or the town’s archives.” He pulled one of the online articles out of his pocket that he’d printed off, unfolded it, and dropped it onto the corner of Aram’s desk. Aram stared at the dented papers and discolored photographs.

“Yes, the color is a bit off, isn’t it?” Red sighed. “I need to get a new color ink cartridge for my printer, but I keep forgetting.”

“If it’s not publicly available online, then it might require some slightly unorthodox methods for me to find when you want.” Aram frowned and looked like he wanted to push the article off the desk.

“I trust your capabilities, and of you do this, you might help in closing two different cold cases.” Red knew Aram wasn’t an an attention seeker per se, but he did enjoy being acknowledged, and more importantly than that, he had a strong moral code that drove him to do the right thing, and sometimes that moral code let him do things that weren’t completely legal when Red asked him to.

Aram picked up the papers and sat them down next to the keyboard. “All right. I’ll give you information on both the things you asked for when I have them, but it might take longer to find the photographs of the gas can.”

“I’ll trust you’ll find the photos relatively soon.” Red placed a hand on Aram’s shoulder and smiled down at him. Aram glanced down at his hand like it was a spider that had suddenly dropped from the ceiling and onto his shoulder. He pulled his hand away and watches as Aram turned back to the computer, shooting one quick glance at him as he turned around to walk out the door.

He walked away from Aram’s office and toward the door that lead into the file room that held the records Elizabeth had wanted. Perhaps he was wrong in prying into her parents’ deaths, but he wouldn’t have been looking further into it if not for the connection to the arsonist case that had scarred him. Just minutes ago, in his own way, he’d tried to tell her that there was no point in dwelling on impossible to solve cases, but there he was now, digging into two different unsolved crimes. But this was different.

It was personal to _him_ , and besides that, didn’t the families of those who had been killed in the serial arsonist’s fires deserve to know who had killed their loved ones?

Didn’t Elizabeth deserve that?

He squared his shoulders and walked into the records room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've gotta say that all the true crime podcasts I've been listening to at work REALLY helped with this chapter.


	12. Chapter 12

Even with the records from Red’s old case and extra research he’d had Aram do, there was still very little solid information about Lionel Leane. As she read through the information, Liz tried to remain calm in the face of yet more scant information. She had studied for this. This was her life—taking evidence and inferring psychological information from it. What was known about Leane was this:

Occasional references to an identity broker with the alias of “Lionel Leane” began cropping up six years ago on forums on the dark web. It hadn’t taken users long to figure out his alias was a taken from one of the investigators on the Somerton case, and it was hypothesized that he’d taken on the alias as a metaphor for the fact that, once he’d sold you an identity, no one would be able to figure out who you were, just like the Somerton Man. Beyond that, the information about Leane that circulated on the dark web—and on the indexed parts of the internet, for that matter—, was speculative and hyperbolic.

The information taken from Red’s old case was just as vague. He and Ressler had become aware of Leane when they were interrogating the accomplice of a murderer they were investigating, and it came out that the accomplice had been attempting to use Leane’s services in order to disappear. The accomplice told them that a friend had given him an encrypted e-mail address that could be used to contact Leane. The friend had said that the content of the initial e-mail would have to explain why you were interested in using Leane’s services, and if the identity broker was interested, he’d e-mail you back, asking for specific details--and sometimes evidence--as to your plight before selling an you identity.

In that way, Leane differed from most sellers on the dark web. Most simply operated out of illegal internet marketplaces that were easily accessible to those that were able to find links.

As Liz put down the information, she tapped her fingers against the desk, one arm braced against the back of her chair. Red’s side of the desk was empty. After he delivered the documents to her, he said he had something important to do, and left with little more explanation than that. She wanted to ask questions about where he was going, but as long as it wasn’t related to the case, was it really any of her business? They were work partners, but anything that they did outside of work didn’t matter, did it?

She flipped one of the pages over and underlined two sentences. She was researching Leane, she reminded herself, not Red. Tapping the cap of the pen against the pages, she began to make notes. 

Those that sold their illegal products on the dark web were all secretive and anonymous as a rule, but Leane was even moreso. He seemed to have no interest in advertising his product. Rather, he let word of his services spread from person to person, and based on Red’s case, it seemed that you had to know someone else in order to contact Leane. And even after the initial contact, he didn’t happily sell you an identity, whether or not your problem was real. He wanted to review each person and get evidence. Her first thought was that the vetting process was due to extra caution in an effort to avoid undercover police trying to track him down, and perhaps that was part of his reasoning, but what if he had his own moral compass? Other identity thieves sold their products indiscriminately—as long as they got paid, they were happy. They didn’t care what their costumers used the products for. But perhaps Leane’s secrecy stemmed from more than just wanting to avoid law enforcement.

Maybe he wanted to only help those that he found worthy of being given a stolen identity.

If he was moralistic in some way and technologically savvy, did he belong to any hacktivist groups that crusaded for various causes they deemed just? Even if he did, that wasn’t any particular help, as he almost certainly wouldn’t used his well known Leane alias in those circles. And besides that, hacktivist groups were also terribly competent when it came to remaining anonymous.

 It wasn’t as of Liz was incompetent when it came to computers, but nor did she know much about the world of encryption keys and codes that Leane inhabited. She wasn't trained in the skills that would allow her to hunt down her quarry across the internet and arrest them. She lived in a world of blood and violence, mind and motive, not the world of glowing screens and leaked information. There was a reason she’d never wanted to join Cyber.

She glanced up across the room, her pen making an absent zig-zag along the bottom of a page. Over at Ressler and Navabi’s desk, Navabi was shuffling papers and placing them into a file, her mouth tight as she glanced up at the clock on the wall. Liz looked up at the clock as the other woman did, and saw that it was around the time that she usually took her lunch break. She capped the pen. Navabi closed the file folder and started to rise from her chair.

As a thought came into her mind, Liz shifted her legs, rubbing her fingers over the papers that sat in front of her, biting her lip. She and Navabi were taking lunch at the same time, and the other detective had been relatively friendly to her in the past, and in the past year and a half, Liz’s friendships had dwindled. 

Before the divorce, the fact that she never had close friendships in the MPD hadn’t mattered, because she’d had a decent social life outside of work. After the debacle with Tom’s criminal activities and the proceeding divorce, friends had offered support and advice, when the last thing she wanted was unwarranted words of sympathy that she found hollow. Logically, she knew they wanted to help, but in her irrational, betrayed state of mind, she wanted to be alone, feeling no one could understand, and she’d lashed out. Those that hadn’t been driven away by her aggression stopped trying to contact her when she stopped picking up the phone and answering texts.

Maybe she needed to try to make new friendships and acquaintances. If not for the benefit of her social life, then at least for the benefit of having positive connections in the homicide division.

She glanced down at the papers one more time, blew out a breath as she stood, and walked toward Navabi, who was heading toward the exit.

“Hey, so I was about to go on my lunch break. If you’re taking your lunch break too, do you maybe want to join me? I know a great little place nearby.” She tilted her head left, indicating the general direction of the place she was talking about.

Navabi’s face was blank for a moment before she smiled. Had the pause meant that she hadn’t expected Liz’s offer, but didn’t mind it, or did it mean that she didn’t particularly want Liz to join her, but she wanted to remain polite?

“Sure. I’m happy to discover something new, and I think we both probably deserve a break.”

* * *

The place Liz had taken Navabi was called _Jerome Soup-erb Soups and Sandwiches_ , and it wasn’t _great_ by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it was just as kitschy as the name implied, and also just as homey as a place could be that had a blatant pun in its title. She’d discovered _Jerome’s_ initially when she needed to get away from her crumbling marriage, and thereafter she became a frequent customer whenever office politics became too much or simply needed to be alone among strangers. _Jerome’s_ became a place of solace because of that, but perhaps especially so because it reminded her of the sorts of sandwich and soup shops she’d frequented when she lived in Nebraska.

As she and Navabi slowly munched at their food, she tried to think of a topic that wasn’t work related. Unfortunately, that _was_ the only thing on her mind at the moment, so she gave up and said, “How’s the strangler case going?”

Navabi glared at her soup as if the bowl was filled with acid. Liz knew how it felt to be furious at a case, so she should’ve known not to ask. Surely she could’ve come up with something more neutral? Her fingers dented the toasted bread of her sandwich as she mentally kicked herself.

“We thought we had a suspect. He matched the criteria—big, strong, favored his right hand, matched certain parameters in the profile you gave us, and some of his hairs were found at the scenes of two of stranglings.” Navabi’s spoon clanked against her bowl as she dipped it into the soup. “Both of those stranglings had been near nightclubs, and it turned out that he’s a patron of one of the nightclubs. He just happened to pass through the areas before the bodies were left there.”

She and Red didn’t even _have_ a suspect. “I’m sorry,” she said with a grimace. “But serial killers always slip up, and this guy doesn’t seem organized about his killings, so he’s eventually going to get lazy and make a mistake.”

“Potential victims don’t have time for us to wait for him to make a mistake,” Navabi said, voice sharp. Liz knew that the sharpness wasn’t directed at her, but rather the faceless perpetrator. Still, she’d hoped that their lunch wouldn’t be quite so intense.

She chose another topic that was work related, but hopefully less emotionally charged. “If you don’t mind my asking, do you know why Ressler and Red aren’t partners anymore?” She rolled her eyes. “Of course, aside from the fact that they probably butted heads every other hour.”

The new topic seemed to make Navabi more thoughtful, but not more relaxed. She stirred her soup before taking another sip. “I’m not sure if it’s for me to say.”

Liz put down her sandwich. “Is it… _that_ bad?” She knew from firsthand experience that Red could be hard to deal with, but if they’d been partners without incident for five years, what had gone wrong? “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if it’s something I need to know about as Reddington’s partner…”

Navabi sighed. “I suppose you deserve to know.” She crossed her arms and leaned them against the table. “As you said, Ressler and Reddington were never close, and they had many disagreements, but that didn’t mean they didn’t respect each other on some level. They have different ways of going about things, but they’re both effective detectives. For the most part, their different methods and personalities balanced each other out.”

Navabi shifted in her seat and glanced around, as if someone was listening, but the lunch hour crowd surrounding them was too engrossed in their own conversations or cell phones to care about two homicide detectives quietly exchanging scandalous information.

“About six months ago,” Navabi said, voice lower, “they were assigned a particularly brutal stabbing case. They had a suspect, but all the evidence was circumstantial. But the suspect had a cousin that they believed he knew more than he was letting on. Reddington and Ressler visited him and interrogated him, but nothing came of it. I’m sure you know that Reddington occasionally uses unconventional methods to procure information.”

Liz had seen him threaten Logan Shawe with blackmail only two days ago, so she knew all too well what Red might do. But she didn’t believe it had been wrong. Somewhat underhanded? Perhaps, but it had gotten them crucial information. Perhaps she would’ve felt differently if Shawe didn’t appear to be an unscrupulous ad agent, but only time would tell how she ultimately felt about Red’s tactics.

“Yeah, I’ve seen him do it,” she said.

“Most people in the homicide department know some the things he’s done, and we let him do it, because he’s effective and capable. But this time he decided to get in touch with one of his old contacts and send him to threaten or hurt the suspect’s cousin in order to get the information they needed.”

Liz’s eyebrows rose, heat bubbling up in her chest. “That’s—” Unethical? Illegal? Shameful?

Seeing that she was unable to come up with a coherent reaction quite yet, Navabi continued. “He and Ressler fought about whether or not it should be done. Reddington ultimately decided to go ahead by himself, but Ressler warned the cousin that someone might be coming soon to threaten him, so the suspect’s cousin ran.”

Liz all but tossed her half-eaten sandwich down on her plate, shifting in her seat with irate energy. “How could Reddington think that would be the right thing to do at all? And how does he even still have a job? Knowing Ressler, I would’ve assumed he would have reported Reddington’s plan to Cooper.”

Navabi’s expression became unreadable as she watched Liz’s rising anger. “Due to certain things their suspect said, Reddington believed that he was going to kill again soon, and if they didn’t move quickly, it would be too late.”

Liz snorted so hard that her nostrils stung. “That’s not an excuse. You can’t have a man threatened and potentially injured on the basis of a _hunch_. He didn’t even know that the suspect’s cousin was an accomplice.”

Navabi’s lips tightened, and her eyes flicked down. “Sometimes we do things that might be questionable in order to protect others.” Her eyes flicked up again, and they were like shards of glass. “You’ll probably learn that soon.”

At that point, she didn’t think Navabi was completely talking about Red any longer. When Liz had been a uniformed officer, she’d heard little about the other woman—but Navabi’s reputation had been as someone who was enigmatic and pragmatic. It wouldn’t be surprising if she saw some of herself in Red.

“That still doesn’t explain why he still has a job,” she said, keeping her voice controlled.

“Reddington isn’t an idiot. He knew that Ressler probably wouldn’t like his plan, so he only spoke of it in the hypothetical, and he never gave anything concrete to Ressler that he could’ve used as evidence of his potential wrong doing. Besides, in the end, I think they wanted to keep it between the two of them.” She pulled her arms off the table, hardness in her gaze gone. “But there were still consequences to what happened. Cooper noticed they weren’t working well together anymore, so I was partnered with Ressler, and Reddington worked solo for a while, until you came along.”

She had nothing left to say. There was only so much she could ask Navabi, and she suspected that the other detective had told her almost everything she knew. Heat still pressed against her ribs, but she knew that Navabi wasn’t the one that her anger should be directed towards. She’d only been a messenger, no more to blame for what had happened than a newspaper was guilty of the depressing stories that it relayed to the public day in and day out. If she wanted any further explanation, she needed to go to the source.

“I’m sorry this lunch wasn’t exactly relaxing, but I’m still glad you told me. Maybe we can do this some other time. If we do, I’ll make sure to try not to unearth any earth shattering revelations about co-workers.” She smiled weakly as she slid off the chair and headed for the door.

* * *

"We need to discuss something.” Liz wanted to slam herself down into her seat and wheel around to face Red, but instead, she slowly pressed herself into the chair and crossed one leg over the other, each movement calculated and controlled to get his attention. She didn’t like the fact that it seemed like something he might do.

He looked up from his computer, eyes narrowed as he took in the straight, neutral set of her mouth and blank expression. “Did you learn anything useful about Leane?”

“No,” she said, leaving it at that for a moment. She’d let him sit in suspense over what she might have discovered. What else wasn’t he telling her?

It wasn’t just the fact that she didn’t like what he’d plan to do to the suspect’s cousin. That was part of it, but the other part was that she had allowed herself to at least partially begin trusting her partner. After they stopped fighting, they had been doing well together. Some of his advice had been genuinely helpful, and they fell into an easy push and pull in their conversation with Blaze, and then both times they'd questioned Shawe, feeling out the situation as it unfolded—pressing the ad agent or pulling back where necessary. It was like an invisible dance between their minds. Except, there weren't any instructions to the dance. Each party had to closely observe the other and decide what move to take next. She’d never fallen into a rhythm quite like that with one of her colleagues before.

And then there were the other things. The little comforting or affirming touches he gave her, accompanied by encouraging words. How was she supposed to reconcile that with a man that was willing to hurt others to get what he wanted?

Red’s body was still and almost stiff as he looked at her. “What is it then?”

“Navabi told me about why you and Ressler aren’t partners anymore. About what you planned to do to that suspect’s cousin,” Liz said, tone rising, fingers curling around the arms of the chair.

He lay his hands in his lap, face as shut off and as unreadable as hers had been moments ago. It was like a door had been slammed between them. “I see.”

The fact that was all he could say for himself sent a new bolt of anger down her spine and into her gut. “ _You see_? Well then, do you see why that plan was wrong on every level? Even if it wasn’t illegal, how do you know it would’ve been effective? You had _no_ idea if the suspect was even guilty, or if his cousin knew anything! You could’ve been threatening an innocent man. Red, what is wr--”

“What is wrong with me is that I didn’t care to see another person stabbed fifteen times,” he said, voice tight and controlled. “The suspect knew he was guilty, but he also knew that we had no forensic evidence tying him to the case. Everything was circumstantial.”

Liz knew he would try to justify what he’d planned, but she hadn’t been prepared for it. She inhaled at his cool tone, her bottom lip twitching, her chin lifted.

“A week after Donald warned the man’s cousin, a teenage boy was found killed in the same fashion as the first victim. When we investigated the suspect again, he even let us go through his home while he was there, and the entire time, he just calmly stood there,” for moment, Red’s hands tightened around each other, “saying what a shame it was that we seemed incapable of doing our jobs and catching whoever it was that had killed the two victims.”

So it seemed that Ressler and Red being split up was about more than just Red becoming angry over Ressler sabotaging his plan to solve the case. If anything, the split seemed to mostly be about the fact that someone else had been killed as a byproduct of his plan not coming to fruition. He couldn’t forgive his partner for letting another innocent die.

Her fingers loosened around the chair’s arms. “I…I didn’t know about that part.”

Red lowered his eyes and exhaled. “Only Donald and I know about that.” He snorted and raised his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief. “And now you.”

She swallowed at that and uncrossed her legs. Red’s words often meant more than their surface meaning, and she thought, “ _And now you_ ” also meant, _“I trust you”._ Maybe the gulf between the ridiculous, loud, clever and sometimes kind person she was growing to know and the man that was willing to threaten another person wasn’t so wide. His plan had been born out of a primary factor that seemed to drive him—the urge to protect others. She understood what that was like. Even if she still didn't like his plan, she understood the drive to care for others.

She scooted her chair closer to him, and as she did, a furrow grew between his eyebrows. Reaching out for his hands that still sat loosely in his lap, Liz picked them up between hers and looked down at them for a moment, and when she glanced up at him and his face grew even more confused.

“Let’s get back to trying to catch Chase-slash-Shane’s killer.” She squeezed his hands. “We have a duty toward Maggie and her daughter.”

He nodded, and when he smiled at her, something warmed in the center of her chest.


	13. Chapter 13

As they waited on forensic results to find anything they could on Chase’s true identity, Liz and Red threw themselves into re-examining the evidence on hand and delving deeper into avenues that they had already gone down. They had several more conversations—this time, over the phone—, with Maggie, asking for any tiny details that she hadn’t given them before. They hadn’t yet told her about the fact that her husband was not who he said that he was, and that she had been in fact married to a stranger for the past eight years.

Liz wanted to tell her. Each time she was on the phone to Maggie, the confession was on the tip of her tongue, trembling and threaten to roll off like a swollen bead of dew trickling off a leaf, but somehow, she always managed to hold back and only ask the relevant questions. They learned little more than they had the first few times talking to Maggie.

Then they re-interviewed the seven acquaintances from the list of acquaintances that Maggie had given them. None of them had anything new to say, and two—including Shawe—became wary and closed off at the sight of the police visiting them again.

When they got the results back from Chase’s computers, Liz had some hope there would be something useful on them, especially considering the fact that Chase had been in contact at some point with an identity broker. But it appeared he only used his computers to conduct his graphic design business, and the former clients that she and Red called had no useful information. All they said was essentially the same thing—Chase was talented, submitted his projects by the deadline, and was always professional, but there was always something distant about him.

As all of this unfolded, five days turned into seven, then into ten, then into thirteen. Liz knew that forensics took time, especially when there were backlogs in the labs. And they didn’t just have the DNA to wait on—it was the fingerprints and dental records too. How long would it take to try to match all DNA, fingerprints, or dental records against a database with missing persons from across the country? And there was still the fact that it was possible Chase had never formally been reported as missing.

As they retraced their steps and went down new roads, Red saw that was she becoming increasingly impatient. He told her that with her first case, it was natural to become antsy, but if she tried to rush things, that’s when mistakes would start happening. Things took time, especially with backlogs and bureaucratic red tape to get through. She’d made a comment about wanting to take a pair of shears to bureaucratic red tape, and he’d smiled and told her that if she kept talking that way, then she might be branded the criminal. She’d just rolled her eyes in a good natured way and went back to typing up a report.

If their case wasn’t progressing, at least her partnership with Red had. After their discussion about what Navabi had told her, they fell back into whatever routine it was they were developing. It felt natural—if she needed something, she didn’t need to lead up to her question at all. She could simply begin their discussion with no precursor at all.

They started bringing each other food when the other was too absorbed in their work, and if one of them didn’t like it, they’d complain, but secretly she’d be grateful he brought her something, and she suspected he was grateful too even when he complained. The first time Red brought her lunch, it was from her favorite Chinese place. She’d blinked at it, and he’d rolled his eyes and said it wasn't as if she was keeping her favorite take out place a mystery, considering the fact she’d left empty take out boxes on their desk several times. Still, the idea that he cared enough to get her take out from _that_ particular Chinese restaurant rather than one that was closer, was…nice. Better than nice, actually. It had been a long time since anyone had paid any sort of attention to her likes and dislikes.

When she went home to her empty apartment on evening—and spent much of her time there on weekends—it was strange not to be surrounded by the nervous, pulsing energy of the police station, with the ever present weight of Red beside her. They didn’t always need to say anything to each other to know what had to be done. Sometimes just a glance and a nod in the direction of the phone was enough to know it was time to call one of Chase’s clients.

And once she got home and she was away from that wordless connection, it was, she had to admit, lonely. Loneliness wasn’t an emotion she’d wanted to admit to, even though it was always circling, disturbing the surface of her conscious mind even before her divorce. When she wandered her way through motel room after motel room, she wanted to believe she’d become stronger than the need for companionship. But she knew better than that, of course she did.

She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t need _someone_.

But as the days started blending together and there were still no forensic reports, one night Liz found herself researching Leane once again. There were anecdotal reports that he was especially sympathetic to those running away from abusive or otherwise generally life threatening situations. He might help you escape crippling debt or bankruptcy, but he’d be much more sympathetic to your cause if you were running away from a dangerous significant other or were likely to be killed by the questionable crowd you’d fallen into.

As she scrolled through the internet, a cooking show babbling in the background, a plan started to form in her head.

* * *

“Detective Keen, I understand you desire to solve this case, and I don’t say this as a slight against your competence, but you are new, and you have no experience with sting operations.” Cooper had his hands folded across the desk and his the corners of his mouth were edging down into a frown. “And I’m not sure I want to risk contacting Leane, ruining the sting, and losing our chance of going after him in the future.”

She couldn’t afford to lose his support. “Sir, I completely understand that. But I’m building a profile on Leane, and I think I can get into his head enough to get him to give up our John Doe’s real identity.”

Cooper shifted and leaned one shoulder up, elbow leaning against his desk as he pressed the tips of his fingers to his cheek. He wasn’t interrupting her to talk her out of it, so she decided that was a good enough sign as any to keep going.

“You can have as many people as you want helping me on this to keep me in check and give me advice about the technical aspects of the deep web, or anything else that will be involved in this operation. All things considered, my role will be fairly small. I’ll just be the one typing to him. So, I won’t be really be anything more than a glorified messenger, anyway.” She tilted forward in her chair, catching Cooper’s eyes. She didn’t want to seem desperate, but she needed his full attention. “If things start going wrong, you can pull me out or put someone else on the task of talking to him, but let me at least _try_.”

Cooper glanced down, tapping the tip of a pen against the desk. “You don’t trust that forensics will eventually reveal the identity of the John Doe?”

She lay her hands flat on the chair. His question wasn’t yes or no—but hopefully he wasn’t stalling in turning her down. “I don’t know. We have no idea where this John Doe came from, or if he was even reported missing. And even if forensics does eventually figure out his identity, it could take so long that his killer will be long gone. I think our best chance is going at this in an unconventional way.”

Cooper lowered his hand and laced his fingers together. “You’ll understand if I’ll need some time to think about this, Keen. And I will have to discuss this with cyber crimes to get their take on it.”

Liz nodded, trying not to feel hopeful. There was still a chance he’d say no, but time to think…that was something. That meant she’d at least made a case that was worth considering. “Of course.”

“I’ll give you my final decision in a few days.”

“Thank you, sir.” And as she rose from the chair he nodded at her before going back to the papers he was looking down at.

She had to bite her lip to keep herself from smiling.

* * *

When Cooper called her back to his office several days later, her stomach went up and down like an elevator, unsure whether to walk to his office with legs made of stone to hear him gently telling her no, or to walk with legs might of air to hear her hopes confirmed.

When he indeed gave her the go-ahead, she remained calm and grateful, nodding politely and giving out "thank you sir"s, but on the inside, she was soaring. He’d given her caveats, of course. That she needed to draw up a plan with Red’s help and have it approved by Cooper before finally going through with the sting, and, since she’d become somewhat acquainted with him, she’d be monitored and advised by Aram—and potentially other members of the cyber crimes unit if things started to go particularly badly—as she communicated with Leane.

As she walked out of the office, she wanted to grab the nearest officer and shout the good news at them. Instead, she simply walked back to her desk, not disguising her triumphant smile as she sat down.

Red assessed her for mood a moment, eyes sweeping up and down. “Did you win the lottery and decide to move to the Caribbean? If so, it would be selfish to leave me out of it.”

Liz hadn’t told Red about any of the details of her plan yet, but she suspected that he might like it, since he tended to enjoy rather unconventional methods of crime solving. “We’ve mostly been leaving the Lionel Leane angle alone, but I decided that it might be a good idea to try it. I told Cooper about a plan I came up with to conduct a sting operation on Leane. If I get his trust, I think we have a chance of getting Chase’s real identity from him.”

Once she finished, Red just looked at her, then laughed—that sudden, quick burst of a laugh that he gave when he couldn’t quite believe something. It wasn't uncommon for him to laugh in such a way, but she still took satisfaction when _she_ was the one eliciting it from him.

“You’re going to contact and deceive an identity broker that’s been cyber crime’s white whale?” He raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged. “Yep.”

He draped an arm over the back of his chair and crossed his legs. “It’s audacious as hell.”

“Since when did you start having a problem with audacious?” She crossed her arms and tried to look serious, but she couldn’t keep a small smile off her face. She couldn’t contain her joy at coming out victorious, and besides, Red _liked_ her plan. It was obvious from the gleam in his eyes and quirk in his mouth. When they were on the same page, they were a force to be reckoned with.

He lifted a few fingers off the back of the chair and pressed his lips together. “I don’t have a problem with it at all. I’m just sorry I wasn’t the one that thought of it.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but I don’t think Leane would fall for your charms.” She almost regretted admitting that she’d noticed he had any charms at all.

“I’m disappointed you such have little faith in my charms, Elizabeth,” he said, voice reaching into the deeper register, vibrating in his chest, body relaxing as he leaned a bit closer toward her.

She didn’t move forward or away from him, she just sat still, arms crossed. “It’s not that I don’t have faith in your abilities, it’s just that I’m confident in mine too, though my charms lie in different areas than yours.”

If it was necessary, she _would_ flirt to gain information, but that wasn’t her preferred method of gaining evidence. If she needed to play mental games with a suspect, flirting was rarely her first choice.

“Be that as it may, Elizabeth, I daresay I doubt you’re shoddy at the particular brand of charm we’re discussing.” He lowered his eyelids and looked up at her with a slow, dragging gaze that was like a lazy lion taking its time watching its quarry—taking satisfaction at the sight before going in for the kill. “And I wouldn’t mind seeing you at work.”

Liz wasn’t going to let the current line of conversation go any further than it already had. Her interest in meaningless flirting with a total stranger was low at best, and her level of interest in engaging with flirting with Red was—

Well, she just didn’t want to go any further. They had more important things to discuss, after all.

“Have you checked in with forensics today? I’m guessing they’re still still backlogged.” She uncrossed her arms and let her body droop into her chair to show Red that she was unconcerned by his amorous overtures.

He was still before answering, body a loose, curved line angling towards her, his crooked smile turning into a straight line, eyes lifting before he readjusted into a more professional position, though he still kept one arm over the back of the chair. “Chase’s true identity remains as slippery as ever. Whoever is bogging them down deserves to murdered again thrice over.”

The fact that no results had come in yet made _relief,_ of all things, come over her. She immediately felt guilty at the cool wash of the emotion—shouldn’t she have wanted Red to tell her that they’d finally gotten some indication as to who Chase really was? It would’ve made everything so much easier, and she could’ve finally confessed to Maggie that Chase was not who she thought he’d been. But if she was being honest with herself—and she didn’t want to be at that moment—the relief came because she would be able to implement her plan and see if it worked. It was selfish, and it was wrong, but there was no changing how she felt.

She ran a hand over her face, in part to conceal her inner conflict, but also because of real frustration. “Our laundry list of leads to follow up on and explore is a mile long today. Cooper wants us to discuss the plan together and present him with a written version of it within a few days, but when are we going to have time to do that? Every day we’re busy.”

When she pulled her hand off her face, Red swallowed and looked almost… _uncertain_. He was glancing away from her, jaw working as he pressed his teeth together “If you want, you’re welcome to come to my apartment tonight. We can discuss and begin writing up the plan there.”

She couldn’t keep her mouth from opening, though she caught herself and quickly closed it. Though he put on airs of seemingly not caring who knew what he did, he was still deeply private. Despite his occasionally prickly inclinations, he still acted familiar with plenty of people in and outside of the homicide department. But she knew what having few friends looked like, and he didn’t seem truly close with—well, anyone, really.

Except perhaps her. “Close” was maybe the wrong word, but simply because they spent so much time together, their partnership was naturally going to be deeper than most relationships he had with anyone at the MPD. Still, the fact he was offering to let her into his private world was surprising.

“If you visit, I promise to behave,” he said, seemingly taking her prolonged silence for apprehension.

Liz tilted her head and pretended to be looking behind his back to see if he’d crossed his fingers to cancel out his promise. “Okay, sure. I’ll go over at seven o’clock. I need eat something first.”

“Or you could bring food for both of us,” he suggested, raising a hand in the air.

“Not after you criticized what I bought us for lunch last time,” she said, glaring at him. For once, he’d seemed genuinely offended at her choice of food.

“I’m sorry to tell you this dear, but even a starving stray cat would have turned its nose up at the take out from that awful noodle house.” He gave a shudder that she wasn’t certain was fully fake.

“We’ll eat separately, then, and I’ll see you at your place at seven,” she said, turned away from him, and picked up the desk phone to begin the fruitless chase for Chase’s identity.

* * *

Something like nerves knotted her insides as she knocked on Red’s door. Red existed in the very specific world of “work hours”, and letting her off hours intersect with his felt like she was crossing some kind of divide she couldn’t come back from. She was about to knock again when she heard soft footsteps against carpet before they stopped outside of the door. There was a click, jiggle of the knob, and he pulled the door open.

He was standing with a glass of scotch in one hand, dressed in a white shirt and black pants. His clothing tastes typically ran into the “overdressed” at work, so seeing him dressed down in what must have been casual for him gave her the same, surreal feeling as seeing a teacher at the grocery store. It made sense that such an event was happening, but it was nevertheless almost unbelievable.

“Come in,” he said, smiling, but before he did, she caught a tired, weary expression on his face, like he’d forgotten that he wasn’t alone. She felt guilty for making him put on a mask in front of her. Maybe they weren’t strictly friends, but she didn’t want him to feel like he had to put on false pretenses for her.

He walked out of the way so she could enter his apartment. Throughout the day, she’d been wondering what his living quarters would look like. She’d imagined they’d be very him—extravagant and old world. And the apartment did have an old world feel to it. In fact, she almost felt like she stepped into the private study of a man of letters from the early twentieth century, what with his two bookshelves, one that appeared to be lined with books on history, art, and architecture, while the other held leather bound volumes of classic novels. A few picture frames sat on the shelves with faces of people she didn’t know.

A sofa sat in the middle of the room with a coffee table in front of it, and on one of the couch cushions, a brown tabby was washing itself. It paused, tongue pressed against its chest, and stared at her, eyes wide and golden before it turned its head to Red as if asking, _Who is this and why did you let this interloper into our home?_ She hadn’t expected him to own a pet of any sort, but now that she knew he did, it seemed right somehow.

The apartment wasn’t extravagant at all. It was old and worn, but it was nevertheless proud and unapologetic about what it was, much like the man that owned it.

Red tilted back the glass and drained it, eyelids lowered. She didn’t doubt he held his alcohol well, but she still hoped he knew his limits and would be sober enough for their discussion. “I invited you here, so you needn’t feel like a voyeur. If it will satisfy you, you can look around.”

Liz hesitated before nodding. She still felt like she was intruding, but she was nevertheless wanted to further investigate his home. She walked over to one of the shelves, eyes scanning over the books. They were mostly titles she didn’t know, their spines a pastel rainbow of art history, one saying,  _The Post Impressionists by Alfred Werner_ , and _Essential History of American Art by Suzanne Bailey_. Her browsing of the various titles was interrupted by a picture frame of a young woman sitting in the middle of the shelf. 

The woman who looked as if she could have been in her late teens or early twenties grinned into the camera, hands clasped in front of her, a side-braid thrown over her shoulder. There was little doubt who she was--she had the same mischievous half-smile and sloping nose of her father.

She ran a finger along the edge of the frame, then withdrew it when she realized it wasn't polite to touch his things without his permission. She folded her hands behind her back, glancing over to see whether he had seen her touching the frame, but thankfully he was sitting on the couch, pulling open a file folder. His cat leaned over and sniffed it, and as it did, he patted it on the head, smiling fondly.

"She's very beautiful," Liz said, glancing back at the frame.

"Hm?" He looked up, hand reaching into the file folder as the cat bumped its head against his arm.

She nodded at the photo. "The girl. She's your daughter, right?" She didn’t know if she was prying too far, but she wasn’t going to ask any invasive questions.

"...Yes, she is. And thank you." His smile was gone, but he didn’t look annoyed or angry about her question. He was just hiding whatever his real feelings were again.

She turned on her heel away from the bookshelf and made her way to the sofa, where the cat stared at her approach all the while, ears tilted back. Liz would move it if she needed to, but she felt absurd the desire to ingratiate herself to it. She stopped in front of it and reached out her hand near the cat’s face. It sniffed her fingers, nose twitching, one edge of its muzzle curling up in what looked like a sneer. As she was about to pet it, it jumped up, tail a blur as it flicked back and forth. It hopped off the couch and darted away to sit under the chair pushed against the computer desk.

Red chuckled and put the file down. “Don’t mind Ernest, he’s just a grumpy old man.”

Liz stood up and swiped her hands across her pants. "Huh, sounds like someone else I know."

“ _Ah_ , I believe you mean Archie in the booking office. Yes, he _can_ be quite abrasive, but he has had a hip replacement recently, and I’ve heard he’s also going through a kale dieting phase.” He grimaced and picked up the bottle of scotch that sat on the coffee table and tipped a bit into his glass.

She sat down on the sofa next to him, feeling strange and awkward. He was so at home in his environment, limp and sinking back into the familiar give of the cushions, but she perched on the edge of the seat, attentive and alert as she would have been in the home of a witness she was interviewing. She turned to look at him over her shoulder. “I think you know who I was talking about.”

“Of course I don’t,” he said, half talking into the glass, fogging up its surface with the condensation of his breath.

“…So.” She lay down her own folder on the coffee table. “Let’s get started then.”

He put his glass down on the table next to the folder and turned, full attention on her. It was different without other people around. Even when their discussion was becoming intense, she still had the solace of hearing the ambient hum of other people around them, reminding her that it wasn’t just them. The knowledge of others being around kept things at least somewhat professional, but now it was simply her and Red in his apartment, and their only audience was a cat. And she very much doubted Ernest cared about what happened that night, as long as she didn’t become a permanent resident.

“Tell me, what’s your brilliant plan?” His arm was behind her on the couch, and she didn’t know when that had happened.

“Like I said, it’s a sting. Leane is sympathetic to the downtrodden, and from reports I’ve read, those in abusive relationships seem to convince him to sell them an identity with even more frequency than others in equally troubling situations.” She flopped the folder open and pulled out a profile she’d started preparing on Leane and offered it to Red.

He took it from her, eyes darting across the typed words, features still. “You’re planning to pose as a woman looking to escape an abusive relationship?”

It wasn’t hard to jump to her line of reasoning, but felt the invigoration that came over her when their thoughts seemed to connect. “Exactly. I’ll tell Leane that I was acquainted with Chase, and I’d confided with him in the past about my relationship, and when I started talking about wanting to run away, he gave me Leane’s e-mail. That way, I’ll immediately have a connection to Chase, and it will seem natural to talk about him throughout our interactions.”

He dropped the paper into his lap and drummed his fingers behind her. “I believe the man whom initially told me about Leane would give up the e-mail address if offered a deal of some sort. But Leane is quite a thorough man, so how will you make your story convincing?”

That was the part about it she hadn’t wanted to tell him, though she knew it was inevitable that he would eventually know. Liz twisted her fingers, thumb ghosting over where the cold band of a wedding ring once sat. Her thumbnail dug into her palm. “Do you have a second glass I could use?” If she was going to tell him, she _really_ needed a drink.

When she looked up, his face was soft, something sad and knowing in his eyes. “Of course,” he said, and stood up.

Her eyes flicked back down to her hands as he rattled in the cupboard to find a glass. She supposed he didn’t often have company, and any extra drinking glasses were probably shoved to the back. The cushion next to her dipped down as he came back with a glass and sat it on the table in front of her. She reached for the glass of scotch and poured a generous amount into it.

Liz took a sip before heaving a breath. “I think I can sound convincing to Leane, because not all of it will be a lie. I was married for awhile," she said, the words coming out stilted and yanked, like some part of her was trying to drag the confession back into her mouth before it could damage her. "His name was Tom.”

Red didn’t come any closer or touch her as she spoke, he just listened, the corners of his eyes creased as he frowned, cupping his own glass in his hands, scotch trembling from the uneven tilting plane of his palms.

“Things were fine—well, actually, they were great for a while. He seemed like the perfect guy, you know? Attentive, kind, funny.” She shook her head, wanting to go back in time and shake the woman she had been and keep her from making one of the worst mistakes she’d ever made. “But after awhile, things got rough, and we became sort of distant. I was working all the time and hardly around, and though we both wanted a—”

Red didn’t need to know about that part. Even if he was going to see the ragged part of her, some things were still too private, still too personal. “…Anyway. We got distant and fought a lot, and one day I came home early, and heard him on the phone in the bedroom with someone. It sounded…intimate. Not in the way you’re thinking, but he really sounded close to the person, but I had _no_ idea who they were.”

She took another longer swallow of the scotch, almost coughing. “I thought he was having an affair, so I found and hired a Private Detective. I could’ve investigated it myself, but I just didn’t want to. To make a long story short, it turned out that when I met Tom, he’d been a thief, and he still was. I never told him confidential information about cases, but I’d talk to him about work, and he used what I told him to his advantage to help himself and his criminal buddies.”

She tapped one finger against the glass and stared down into the trembling liquid that was brightened by the lamp that sat near them. With each word she said, she felt more drained and deflated, like every time she remembered and relived the story it stole something from her.

She glanced over at Red. “I don’t think he married me at first because of that, but I don’t really know. But what does it matter? How can you just— _use_ someone like that and lie for two years when you’re supposed to love them? How am I sup—”

It was a question Liz been asking since she found out about what Tom had been doing. She still didn’t know the answer, and she doubted that Red did either. She put the glass down on the table. She didn’t need anything making her confess more than she needed to. The words already felt like they were being ripped from her center, laying the pathetic truth in front of Red for him to see. What would he think of her? Would he think she had been naive and idiotic, so drunk with love she’d couldn’t see through her husband’s lies?

“There are people that are simply naturally cruel, Elizabeth,” Red said, voice quiet. “They are cruel and vicious to those who don’t deserve it. They don’t feel guilt about what they do, they just take what they need and move on.”

It was the textbook definition of several psychopathic traits, and in hindsight, she _knew_ Tom had those tendencies, whether or not he met all the criteria on Robert Hare’s Psycopathy Checklist. But in the moment, how could she have known? He was charming, and she was blind and foolish, wanting so _desperately_ to be loved.

“I know.” She rubbed a hand up her arm as if there was a chill, though the temperature of the apartment was perfectly acceptable. “I confronted him about it, and when I did, we got into a fight, but it was physical this time, and I used the photographic evidence of it to get him investigated. That’s when a lot of the other things he did were unearthed, and we got divorced, and—” She shook her head. The divorce and Tom’s trial was a whole other story on its own. It wasn't relevant to the case, and besides, if she told it, she couldn't trust herself not to cry.

“The point is, I know what it’s like to be in a bad relationship, and I still have the photographs of my bruises that I submitted to Domestic Violence. If Leane wants proof, I can give those to him.” The idea of letting a stranger see what had been done to her felt wrong and dirty, but if it got them Chase’s identity, wasn’t that worth it? Everything that had happened was in the past. Tom was in prison. She was divorced.

It was done.

Except, it wasn't, was it? Everything that Tom had done was still affecting her, day by day, minute by minute. He'd broken her trust, twisted her faith in others, made her alone and more bitter than she'd ever been.

“I’m sorry,” Red said, placing a hand against her shoulder, his arm a firm and warm line over her back. "That was an unspeakable thing to go through, and you didn't deserve any of it."

And then, she simply leaned into him.

Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the fact that she still felt shaken from laying out the broken pieces of herself that made her do it. Maybe she just wanted comfort and a solid warmth, and in the moment, it didn’t matter who was offering it. She didn’t know.

It didn’t matter.

But as she did lean against him, she felt the muscles in his side tighten, stiff like an animal that didn’t want to be touched. But after a moment, he relaxed, cheek pressing against the top over head, thumb brushing over her shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” she sighed.


	14. Chapter 14

After a while, Elizabeth pulled away from him and picked up her file again, thumbnail dragging down the pages, biting her bottom lip in that way he found terribly endearing. Her gaze was averted from him, her brow furrowed, fingers busy with papers as she presumably tried to figure out how to redirect their conversation to the topic at hand. Truthfully, he understood. How could she be expected to shove what she had just told him back down into a packed box inside herself, just push it away and pretend it was never confessed? He didn’t want her to feel as if she couldn’t trust him with her secrets, or that he would judge her, picking apart her insecurities like a carrion crow pulling out the choices pieces of meat for itself.

Red did not think that she was weak. Many other people would have folded in on themselves—and understandably so—, unable to process how someone that had pledged their love to them could betray them without a thought. He didn’t doubt that she hadn’t suffered, but she was still persevering and _somehow_ , she found the wherewithal to use her ex-husband’s betrayal to her advantage in a sting operation. That latter part was admirable and a bit brave.

Besides being cruel, Tom had been a colossal fool to hurt someone as intelligent and moral and—

How could he betray someone as magnificent as her?

Of course, Red had not been particularly kind to her when they’d first met. Admittedly, he’d been an idiot. But even then, even when he had dismissed her, he never would have considered hurting her so deeply.

No, he hoped that, wherever Tom was, he would be in prison for a _very_ long time. And if he wasn’t—

Well, then just maybe Red would have the satisfaction of arresting him one day.

Elizabeth sat the file down on one of her legs, scribbling something in the margin. “We should probably start writing up our formal plan tonight,” she said, bright eyes flashing up at him.

It seemed she didn’t want to acknowledge what had just occurred between them. He was used to her changing the subject if she began feeling that their conversation was becoming too…personal, in various senses of the word.

“Afraid that Cooper is going to go after us if we aren’t prompt?” Red crossed one leg over the other and looked down at her scribbled, tiny notes. They were in her own short hand, just as Chase’s had been, and they were almost as indecipherable.

“No.” She lifted the pen and pointed it at him, almost jabbing him in the chest with it, for they were still close to each other. “I just want to get this sting over with so we can get the information we need.”

“Do be careful where you point that.” He nudged the pen away with one finger. “You’re libel to put someone’s eye out if you aren’t more careful, and then where would we be? I would be lacking an eye, and might be forced into a ridiculous, pirate-esque appearance to conceal my missing eye.”

She sighed, and as she did, her bangs fell into her eyes, a few strands falling against her cheek, soft black lines against her pale skin. He ignored the desire to brush the hair away from her face.

“Be serious. I know you’re capable of it.” This time, she didn’t jab the pen in his direction.

He pressed his hand to his chest. “I am being incredibly serious. However, I see that you didn’t bring youur laptop to write the plan, though I do own a computer, which you may use, if you wish.”

Elizabeth glanced at his computer where Ernest still sat under the chair, his yellow eyes glinting in the darkness, head turning toward Red. The tip of his tail flicked back and forth, ears tilted like triangular satellite dishes.

“We can just discuss it and I’ll take notes, then I’ll start writing it up tonight.” She pulled out blank sheets of paper from the file folder and balanced them on her other leg.

“You’re going to need some sleep tonight at some point. I’m sure you can find time tomorrow to start the report,” he said. Over the past several weeks, he’d noticed the growing dark circles under her eyes, angry bruises pressed there by the Sand Man’s thumb when people refused to close their eyes and drift to sleep. He knew what insomnia and sleep lost over a case looked like.

She rubbed one finger rubbed over the back of her hand, legs kept stiff so all the papers wouldn’t fall on the floor. He reached over and took the blank sheets, laying them in his lap. She didn’t move to take them back.

“I won’t stay up all night writing, but I’ll at least get a head start. I’ll be fine—I pulled plenty of all nighters in college. I’m sure you know what that’s like, though your all nighters were probably for other reasons.” Elizabeth gave him a lop-sided smile, but he could see that she was still trying to run away from the information she’d revealed about Tom with changes of subject and weak jokes.

“You’re half correct. I wasn’t nearly as bad a student as you might think, and there were a few times I stayed up all night studying. Although, I didn’t study quite as much as others, yet I still manged to get decent grades.” He shrugged. It wasn’t that everything had come naturally at him, but it seemed that the information he learned managed to stick in his mind more firmly than it did for others.

“I always resented those students that didn’t study, yet still got amazing grades.” Elizabeth breathed out sharply, fingers tightening a bit around her papers. Perhaps her resentment wasn’t as deeply buried as she might have believed it was. “But—the report.”

She held up her pen, to which he lifted the empty papers in response.

For the remainder of the evening, they managed to stay on topic for the most part, though they went down several detours—her asking him questions technical questions about he deep web he couldn’t answer, and a discussion about what to do if forensics came through while they were in the middle of the sting.

By the time she decided to leave, it was ten thirty, and papers were spread across his couch, and both of them had ink stains on their hands, dark flecks and smears from handling notes where the ink had not yet dried, or bumping hands and transferring ink to the other's skin. As he looked at his partner across from him, he liked seeing both their hands bearing the sames stains. There was something oddly intimate about it, something physical connecting them together that no one else at the station shared.

When she walked to the door, he wanted to ask _Are you certain you don’t want to stay longer?_ , but of course he wouldn’t have ever asked aloud. She needed to work on the report at home and he needed to—well, he should probably sleep, but he’d probably read for an unholy length of time before collapsing into bed. 

“Thanks for inviting me over and discussing the operation with me. You didn’t have to do it, and I appreciate it,” she said, smiling at him, hands crossed in front of her as she held the file.

“You’re welcome to do this again with me any time.” He looked back at the length of his apartment, then to her.

“Oh.” She blinked, and he didn’t know if it was because she was surprised, or if she didn’t want to accept his offer. “That’s—I’ll probably take you up on it sometime, but Ernest might not like it.”

Red waved a hand in the direction of his cat. “He’s adaptable.”

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. I suppose it’ll be best if we visit Hayden first thing,” she said, referring to the man that would potentially give them Leane’s e-mail address. “Bye, Red.”

“Until tomorrow.” He nodded at her and she turned away, her body a black, narrow outline as she walked down the length of the beige hallway.

As he shut the door, he closed his eyes, exhaling slowly, shaking his head. The night hadn’t gone badly at all. They’d made a plan, and it seemed that the investigation was moving forward after it had been stalled by the dam of a backlogged forensics lab and an impossible to trace John Doe. But despite that, something weighed in him. It was simply that—

Elizabeth Keen reminded him what it was like to be lonely.

It wasn’t that be never felt the emotion, it was simply that he’d grown numb to it over the years. After a while, the loneliness didn’t ache any more, it simply became a hollowed out void somewhere in his chest that he mostly ignored but occasionally acknowledged. But sometimes there were people that made the spot _burn_ and reminded him that the crimes he had solved did little to outweigh his own personal failures, that he truly was by himself, that he was in his fifties with few meaningful relationships to speak of, and he lived alone with nothing but shelves of books and an aging cat to keep him company. People drifted in and out of his life frequently, a constant shifting cast of characters as he looked on.

He didn’t want Elizabeth to be one of those drifting players. Some small, hopeful—and also idiotic—part of himself wanted her to remain his partner for as long as possible. She was perceptive and clever, and when he and Elizabeth were paired together, something sparked and ignited and they were _good_ , moving in tandem.

Really, he thought, if could spend a few more years in her company, poring over case files with a box of takeout on the desk between them, he’d be content enough.

* * *

“You really believe that it’s best if I take the lead on this discussion?” Elizabeth leaned her chin on her knuckles, gazing at him from the corner of her eye as they drove to the prison to meet with Hayden Mathers. “You have more history with him than I do, so you’ve probably already got a rapport built up.”

He squinted. Even with the sunglasses he was wearing, long beams of sunlight stabbed his eyes. He pulled the sun visor down. “That’s the point. The last time I saw Mathers, he made some very interesting rude gestures at me. One of them I hadn’t actually seen before. He may not be the brightest bulb, but he does have creativity in certain areas.”

She pulled her cheek away from her knuckles as they went over a speed bump. She seemed to be thinking his point over, deciding whether his logic was sound or not. “Is there anything useful you can tell me about him?”

“Mathers is quite easily influenced. That’s why he was an accomplice in the first place—he goaded his friend on as he got into a verbal fight with a man and then stood by, watching like a gaping fish as his friend beat the man to death. Part of the victim’s left cheek somewhat resembled tenderized beef.”

Elizabeth curled her lip at the description.

“He threatened that Hayden would regret it if he didn’t help bury the body and cover up the murder. It should be fairly easy to get through to him and twist him around your pinky finger. Feel free to employ any methods or _charms_ you find necessary.” He twitched one side of his mouth. He expected nothing from her when he made flirtatious comments to her, but he did _so_ enjoy it, and watching her reactions were almost always gratifying.

“I’m not going to threaten him.” She dropped her hand and crossed her arms, eyes narrowed at him.

She was perhaps referring to the story that Samar told her, but he wasn’t certain. Maybe she was just redirecting their conversation.

“Inferring nefarious intent into my suggestions in this case is inaccurate and unnecessary. Mathers needs no such coercion. I’m merely leaving the method of questioning up to your discretion.” As they stopped at a red light, he turned to her, one hand on the wheel. “I trust your judgment.”

Her eyelids fluttered at that. Despite the fact that they had fallen into an easier dynamic than the one they started with, perhaps she still wasn’t sure what to do when he gave her a kind word. But the words were entirely earned, and he _did_ trust her judgment. Of course he would help her, but she was more than capable of taking the leading in their discussion with Mathers.

During the rest of their drive, she had no more questions, she simply tapped the edge of her thumbnail against her bottom lip, which he found delightfully distracting.

After they parked and were ushered into the prison, a guard leading them to a room where they could talk to Mathers, Elizabeth seemed more alert, her body tight, and for a few moments, one of her hands drifted near her concealed gun. Competent or not, this was still her first case, and she probably hadn’t been near so many criminals all at once very often.

“I’ll be standing nearby while you talk to him, and if he starts to make any trouble, I’ll come right over, but I doubt he’ll try anything. Mathers is pretty spineless,” the guard said, pushing the door open for them.

Red let Elizabeth enter the room before he did. It was best to let Mathers see fresh, potentially friendly face first, rather than see the face of someone the he unequivocally disliked. As she walked to the table Mathers sat at, he saw the other man’s face crumple, then turn into a hard glare, jaw grinding. He hadn’t changed much since the last time Red saw him—Hayden Mathers was still a heavy set, pale man with a snub nose and perpetually dirty brunette hair. The orange prison jumper didn’t do much to improve his chalky complexion.

Red pulled the chair out by its top rail, the rubber on its legs squeaking against concrete. He wiggled his fingers at Mathers. “Prison really has done wonders for you, Hayden. Have you been doing something new with your hair, or does the prison simply insist that you wash it more often than once a month? Either way, it’s a _vast_ improvement.”

Mathers looked like he was about to repeat the series of rude gestures Red described to Elizabeth, but when Mathers glanced at the guard, his shoulders slumped forward a bit. Red probably would’ve insulted him anyway, but the insult was nevertheless calculated—it was the routine he and Elizabeth had developed. If it seemed that a an interviewee was being put off by him, Elizabeth rolled her eyes and sighed at him (which was no doubt not always an act), and confided in their witness that she didn’t much like her partner either. It made the witness more likely to trust her and give them needed information.

“Mr. Mathers, I’m Detective Elizabeth Keen,” she said, extending a hand to him. He stared at her with wide eyes, then clutched the tips of her fingers in the depths of his hand and gave it a limp shake. Red had to commend Elizabeth for not wiping that hand on her pants, for Hayden was a singularly clammy individual.

“And by the looks of things, you already know Detective Reddington.” She jerked her head toward him, not even deigning to give him a glance. “Everyone that knows him has that look you're giving him."

Mathers puffed out his cheeks and leaned back in his chair, a sneer on his face, lips lifting up to reveal his yellowed teeth. “Yeah, we know each other pretty well.”

“Have you been told why we’re visiting you today?” Elizabeth folded her hands on the table, keeping Mather’s gaze. She was giving him her respect and attention, which was something that a man like Mathers craved, reaching for it like Tantalus in the depths of Tartarus trying to grab the fruit and drink the water that always drifted out of his grasp moments before he consume either of them.

“Something about that identity seller I tried to contact,” he said, fingers twitching.

“There’s no point in being evasive, Hayden. You’re not going to get anything if you don’t give us something. A relationship is all about give and take, but then again, that probably _is_ why Angelica left you.” Red’s eyes glinted.

 _That_ got Mather’s in a tiff. He pulled away from the chair, scowling deeply. “I don’t do favors for guys like you, so looks like you wasted your time comin’ here.”

Elizabeth turned to him, giving him a glare that might have been real before she turned back to Mathers. “You’ve been treated unfairly by Reddington. Trust me, I completely understand what _that’s_ like. But you aren’t doing a favor for him by giving me the information my case needs.”

He noticed she wasn’t saying “us” or “our case”. The further she dissociated her needs from his, the more Mathers was likely to cough up the e-mail.

He allowed himself a private smile. Yes, he had been justified in trusting her to take the lead on their conversation with Hayden.

“It’s true you’ll be helping me, but you’ll also be helping yourself. The guard told me that you’re well behaved, so if you help me with this case, that will be more points in your favor. I wouldn’t doubt you might get early parole for helping us.” She kept her hands folded, attention all on Mathers like Red wasn’t there.

“You can offer some kinda deal, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna get one.” Mathers leaned back in his chair with a metallic thud.

“Well, yes, after we leave that’s not my decision anymore, but if you cooperate I _will_ put in a good word in with the warden. But if you don’t give me anything, you won’t have any chance of getting out early. This is entirely your choice, Mr. Mathers. I’ll leave right now if you tell me to.”

What she’d said was essentially what Red told him a few minutes ago, but more fairly and gently phrased.

Mathers chewed on the inside of his cheek, tipping his head back so that his bangs would fall out of his eyes. “I didn’t want to help Jacob bury the guy, you know? I only went to the identity seller ‘cause I was scared.”

“People do all kinds of things that might not otherwise do when they’re threatened,” she agreed. “You were frightened and acted in the moment.”

“Right!” He pulled away from the chair again and leaned his elbow against the metal table and pointed at her. “What was I supposed to do? I saw the way Jacob pulverized that guy. There was no way I was gonna let him do the same thing to me, and what’s to say he wouldn’ta changed his mind and killed me later? I _had_ to try to get outta town.”

“Of course not. You couldn’t let someone else’s decision destroy your own life.” Elizabeth shook her head and gave him a sympathetic frown.

“I messed around on the dark net before, so I talked to someone on there about my problem, and they gave me the identity thief’s e-mail address. I didn’t get to even write up a message though.” Mather’s eyes scraped over Red’s face. He and Donald had arrested Mathers before he could do anything.

She sighed and pointed her fingers at him. “I can’t imagine how crushing that must have been.”

“So…” Mathers scratched at the back of his neck, still looking at Red, who raised his eyebrows and smiled at him, tapping a finger against the fact of his watch. Mathers looked away.

“You promise you’ll try to help me?” His lowered his hand where it flopped onto the table and banged, making him wince.

“I will do everything I can to help you if you give me the e-mail. If you’re fair to me, I’ll be fair to you,” she said, even looking down at his hand and grimacing as he rubbed it. She was doing everything to be sympathetic to Hayden, which Red would have, admittedly, found hard to do, though he still would’ve done it if he had to.

“Okay.” Mathers lowered his hands, laying them in his lap, and sighed so deeply that his shoulders pulled up high. “I’ll give it to you.”

Elizabeth’s hand disappeared into her jacket pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. As Mathers was looking around the room, she glanced at Red, nostrils twitching as she sighed. “I forgot a pen _again_ ,” she whispered to him. Underneath the table, he pressed a pen into her palm.

Before Mathers looked back at her, she was lifting up the pen and paper and sliding them across the table to him. “There you go,” she said, giving him a bright smile.

Mathers grinned back at her and took the pen and paper, ready to scribbld down the address, and Red thought that if he’d been the prisoner across the table, he probably would’ve been putty in her hands too if she was looking at him like that.

* * *

“What is this?” Liz knew that Aram was probably growing tired of hearing that particular question, but she had quickly discovered that her cursory research of the dark web hadn’t revealed as much as she thought it had.

“SIGAINT is the most frequently used darknet e-mail service provider, and probably one of the most secure. It even survived attacks from the FBI.” He scooted a few inches away so she could peer at the SIGAINT logo, which looked something like a bleeding eye drawn in MS Paint. “Since it’s both secure and commonly used, Leane will find it reasonable that you’ll be using it.”

“Okay, that makes sense,” Liz said, yet another repetitious phrase she’d been using for the past half hour.

Yesterday after she and Red had obtained the e-mail from Hayden, she spent much of the day completing the formal description of the sting operation, and turned it into Cooper at the end of the day. She could have been spending time returning to the scene of the murder with Red, continuing to ask office workers from the area if they’d seen anything, but she wanted to get the report done as soon as possible, and Red told her he could easily talk to witnesses by himself. She felt a twinge of guilt about making him knock doors and pick up her slack, but it had been generous of him to offer, and she dearly needed to get the report done, so she accepted.

That morning, Cooper approved the outline and sent her to work with Aram on beginning the sting operation. Thus far, it had been somewhat slow going. Aram had been patient while he explained Tor and how it bounced communications across the world in order to keep its users anonymous. She’d seen he had to concentrate in order to use layman’s terms to describe what seemed to be a complicated subject. She was a foreigner in Cyber, and she had to rely on one of the locals to try and translate technical jargon into her native tongue.

She watched, feeling somewhat useless, as Aram set up SIGAINT and Tor on the computer. She did her best to minimize the questions that she had, but when visiting a foreign country, some sort of knowledge about the area and its culture were necessary. After a while, Aram scooted away so that she could pull her chair up to the computer screen, but as she did, he sat by watching every twitch of her muscles. It was his job, of course. 

Cooper told him to help and monitor her so she didn’t make any spectacular mistakes, but she thought the attentiveness with which he watched her also partially had to do with some sort of protective instinct toward the computer he used day in and day out.

She straightened herself in the chair, fingers hovering over the keys as she stared at the blank e-mail box, the cursor flashing at her like a winking eye, daring her to do something wrong.

Liz lay her hands against the keys.

 _Dear Mister Leane_ , she began. _Chase Schneider told me that you could help me._

After that, the rest of the message poured out of her.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit as of 01/04/17: So, I'm back to working on this fic, but I'm leaving the original author's note on this chapter in case anyone wonders why I took a hiatus from this fic for a while.
> 
> Well, like it did for many people, 4x08 shot my motivation to finish this to pieces. However, I pretty much finished this chapter before the episode aired, so I decided to post it. Unfortunately, I'm putting this fic on indefinite hiatus until/unless what Red said is 4x08 is denied (or unless I just lose patience and I just finish this anyway in spite of canon since this is super AU anyway).

She wanted to sit by Aram’s computer and stare into the screen, eyes watering from the glare, to wait for Leane’s response. But such a thing was as ridiculous as it was impractical, and she and Aram both had important things they needed to do besides sit idly by, drumming their fingers, waiting for a response that might never come.

When Liz composed the e-mail to Leane, she’d done her best to sound convincing. She put details in that sounded personal, giving just enough details that it sounded real, but holding enough back to intrigue Leane. But perhaps more important than the “facts” was the emotion she poured into the e-mail. _That_ was what would truly snag Leane’s heart strings and send them twinging. Leane liked proof, but what was the most important to him was the plight of a potential client.

Though most of the details of her alias’ bad relationship were fictionalized, Liz still felt like she’d dug into an old cut, and it was weeping and oozing anew. The details were covered with a fine, precise gloss of lies, but the emotion was truth, naked and sharp enough to slice. She knew what it was to feel betrayed and hurt, to circle around certain subjects, assessing the situation lest it become explosive. When she’d read over the e-mail before sending it, she clamped up the hurt part of herself, and thought that Leane would find her message convincing indeed.

In the end, she hadn’t needed Aram to pry her fingers off the keyboard with a tiny crowbar as she stubbornly waiting for a response. A few minutes after she tapped her finger against the enter key, Red rapped his fist against the doorway and leaned half-way in, eyes sliding over to her.

“I’m feel incredibly bereft interrupt what appears to be a truly thrilling moment, but I’m afraid I need to retrieve Detective Keen from you, Aram.” He leaned his shoulder against the door jamb, arms crossed, looking like he belonged in the section of the station that Cyber resided in. The way Red looked at technology was often the way one might observe an alien species that was crawling out of a space ship of unfathomable dimensions, but despite that, he still managed to insert himself into any environment and look like he belonged there.

“Sure. I’ll let you guys know when a response comes in,” Aram said, scooting his chair back over to the computer as Liz rose, body relaxing now that a relative stranger wasn’t touching his computer. “Oh! I forgot, I have the—”

Red narrowed his eyes, and Aram immediately stopped talking. Liz glanced between the two of them as some silent understanding passed between the two of them. She knew they’d worked together in the past, so perhaps Aram was talking about some past case that she wasn’t privy to, or maybe it was some event that Red just didn’t want him to bring up.

“…I’ll see you by the desk, then, after you boys sort out…whatever.” As she exited the door, she had to edge around Red, as he took up half the space in the doorway. As she did, she almost bumped into his chest. She mumbled a sorry, but he didn’t seem annoyed. He just looked down at her with a half-smile, and a lifted eyebrow.

While she waited for Red to return, she leaned in to the white board, looking at her and Red’s scribbled, commingled notations about their case’s evidence and the timeline. The notes on their evidence was messy, each important piece of evidence was written large and circled, with branches coming off of it with tiny handwriting that was primarily her own, asking speculative questions. Next to her questions, Red’s writing was blockier and a bit larger, and written in red marker—she rolled her eyes at him when he pulled the marker out, and he simply told her that brand recognition was important.

The compared to their speculative notes, the timeline almost bare, only noting the withdrawals from Chase’s account, the almost-fight with Logan Shaw the Wednesday before his death, and then the note that said “left home @ 6:00 AM approx. death @ 7:00 AM”.

“I see you’re doing a splendid job of attempting to strain your eyes, dear,” Red said, announcing his presence as his shoes clicked on the tile.

Liz backed away from the white board and leaned back against their desk, hands curling around the edges. “But if I do, we’ll have matching glasses.” She smiled, knowing that the spectacles that he occasionally wore was a sore subject for him.

“I believe you’d look splendid in a pair of librarian-esque glasses. They would bring out the blue of your eyes.” He came up beside her, leaning on the desk only a few inches away from her.

“Let me guess—next you’re going to tell me that you have a thing for librarians.” She tilted her head to him, hair falling loose over one shoulder. She’d been too lazy that morning to even pull it up into a ponytail.

“No, I was simply offering fashion advice. If you’re willing to listen, I’ll happily offer other little parcels of sartorial wisdom I’ve been meaning to mention to you--”

“Okay, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?” She glanced down at their desk that was piled with papers on both sides. Her side of the desk was a bit more chaotic than Red’s, but she still had her own system of organizing things. Primarily that system involved smacking a stack of papers down on her section of the desk and remembering which stack contained witness statements and which contained information about evidence, and then continuing to pile up papers in a vague, thematic fashion. She didn’t know what Red’s system was, but now that she’d seen his apartment, she could see that his section of the desk had the same sort of purposeful, orderly air that his shelves of books did.

“Patience is a virtue.” Red rose from his position beside her, pushing himself away from the desk with the slow movement of his hands.

She lowered her eyes, tracking his small path away from the edge of the desk to his chair. She smiled as she slid off the desk and sauntered towards him. “I don’t think you’re in the position to be giving that sort of advice when you’re not big on virtues yourself.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. The self aware sinners are some of the most qualified people to give advice.” He extended one hand and reached over to a single paper sitting on top of the stack nearest him. “Do you remember that letter sent Chase’s ghost address that you kept dismissing?”

“I didn’t dismiss it. I just—” Liz waved her hand in the air. “I stopped concentrating on it in the midst of everything else. Did you get something on it?”

Her chair was only a foot behind her, but she couldn’t sit. Her body hummed with energy—it seemed that the freeze that had been gripping their case was cracking, small fissures letting the leak of information through. She wanted to pace, to walk a circuit around the desk, but she would have to settle for standing as the excitement and nerves zipped through her veins.

“Miraculously, forensics found the time for our case. I’d almost thought some idiotic young intern dumped our samples in the trash, but then this gift was dropped on my desk this morning.” He presented the paper to her between two fingers. She slid it out of his grasp and lifted it up.

The paper was a brief report about the forensic analysis from the letter that had asked Chase if the money had helped. They weren’t able to get any DNA off the letter, but they did manage to get usable fingerprints—which, unfortunately, weren’t in the system. She tossed the paper back onto the desk. She should’ve known better than to get her hopes up.

“An understandable sentiment, and one that I partially share, but now that we have a fingerprint, if we ever find M or the killer, we now have something to match either of their fingerprints against.” Red folded the forensic report and smoothed it with two pinched fingers, then lay it on small stack that only contained a few other papers.

Liz didn’t like that he was using “if”. Red was experienced, and if he thought that there was some real chance that the case would go cold, it wasn’t a good sign. She wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic about the case either, despite her sting operation, but it would’ve helped if at least one of them seemed to have a less glass half-empty view of their case.

“Yeah, that’s true,” she said, trying to keep her voice flat and neutral. She turned her head back to the white board, about to walk over to it and add the forensic lab’s findings to the evidence section when Aram slunk into the homicide department, looking between them, his eyes wide and body stiff.

“Leane just replied,” he said, eyes still bouncing between them until they landed on her. She tried to gauge whether the response had been good from his expression—but he simply just looked like an animal blinded by headlights. Maybe he was simply shocked that one of the myths that stalked the cyber crimes division had made contact with them.

“We can finish talking about the repercussions of this when I get back,” Liz nodded toward the forensic report, “and discuss whatever Leane said.”

She didn’t wait for Red to respond and followed after Aram, hands jammed into her pockets to keep herself from fidgeting. It seemed that she hadn’t entirely concealed her mood, because one or two officers swiveled to see her and Aram breeze past them, as if their presence brought something in the air, like the crackling, sharp electricity that clung to the sky before a storm. As she walked into Aram’s small room, she dropped down into the chair she’d been using, backs of her legs stinging as she smacked into the seat.

Leane’s e-mail was up on the screen. As her eyes landed on the first sentence of the message, the hairs on her arms rose. She wanted to cover her body’s reaction with a hand, but doing so would’ve drawn even more attention to her hair rising, like a cat bristling, confronted with uncertainty.

 _Janice Macintyre_ , he began, using the alias they’d created, _I’m truly sorry to hear what you’ve been experiencing the past three years, and I applaud your bravery for taking steps to escape this situation. For people in your position, doing so is never easy. I am interested in helping you create a new life for yourself, but you must understand that many people approach me wanting to use my services. I do not say this to dismiss or minimize what you’ve experienced—but I would like to talk to you a bit longer and get more information and evidence from you to be sure that you are who you say you are before beginning the process of giving you a new identity. I also want you to be completely certain that this is what you want to do. There are other options for you, and disappearing under a new identity is never easy. If you are in immediate danger from your significant other, please seek out a safe place for yourself._

_-Lionel Leane_

Liz dropped her limp hands into her lap after reading the message once, twice, three times. She didn’t know what she’d expected from Leane—she’d assessed that he was probably a compassionate person, but the concern with which he wrote to “Janice” radiated off of the screen. Even though he was protecting himself and had doubts about the veracity of her story, he made an effort to extend sympathy and advice to the woman he believed might be in real trouble. She felt a simmering of guilt in her stomach. What Leane was doing was illegal, but he was only doing it to give help to troubled people, and she was taking advantage of his good will. It was necessary, she knew, but the kind tenor of his message didn’t make it any easier, and the pain that came with picking at the scabs of her sham of a marriage didn’t make it better either.

She set her hands against the keys, feet flat against the ground. She had to concentrate both on typing and not on letting her legs bounce. In the corner, the SIGAINT symbol stared at her, the black iris of the eye watching her, the dripping blood a garish crimson splash against the black background of the website.

Mr. Leane,

_Thank you for responding to me in such a timely manner. I’ve fully thought this through, and I understand the ramifications of my decision. As I mentioned in my earlier message, I have no family that I’m close to, and it won’t be easy to leave my friends, but I can do it. I understand that you need to protect yourself. I can only imagine that there are a lot of people that want to use your services for bad reasons, but all I want to do is get away from Tyler. See below for evidence of my identity:_

Liz began attaching links to the false paper trail Aram had set up for Janice Macintyre. They weren’t flawless—among other things, one was a false social media profile, and another was evidence of her work and school records—, but she hoped it would hold up under a cursory inspection. The “evidence” was only meant to support her efforts in ingratiating herself to Leane. Janice was created just for Leane, and Liz was going to do her best to be sympathetic, gracious, afraid, and seemingly honest, all things that Leane seemed to hone in on.

She inhaled as she attached the images of her bruises from the night she and Tom had fought. One set showed several angles of a dark mark on her left arm where she’d been hit, and the second set showed a ring around her neck where she’d been grabbed by the throat. The second set didn’t show her face, which she hoped didn’t seem too suspicious to Leane.

_After attaching the links and images she stilled, inhaling before finishing the e-mail with, If there’s anything else you want, go ahead and ask, and I’ll tell you. I look forward to hearing again from you soon._

_All the best,_

_Janice Macintyre._


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it looks like I'm back! I'm really attached to this story, so I guess I couldn't stay away from it. I just really want to finish it. So here you go--the next chapter.

It seemed that, despite some of the holes in her story, Leane was persuaded by the kind tone of her messages and her sympathetic backstory. Near the end of her shift yesterday, he had e-mailed her back and agreed to further talk to her on an encrypted messanger and discuss how they would help “Janice” disappear.

Since the beginning of today’s shift, she and Leane had initially exchanged small talk about how they were doing. But knowing Leane’s cautiousness, that was probably some kind of a test to see if she slipped up somehow. As she and Leane chatted, Aram watched next to her, working on his own cases, but available at any moment to her. She tried to ignore him and primarily concentrate on the task at hand, but it was hard to when she felt as if at any moment he was about to tell her she had said—or rather, typed—something wrong.

Returning her eyes to the screen, she scanned over his new message.

_L: Tell me more about Tyler. Besides the physical and emotional abuse, does he also tend to restrict what you can do?_

Liz glanced down at the file open on the desk in front of her. It was full of notes about Janice’s engineered background, and the nature of her relationship with Tyler. She’d been consulting it more than she’d wanted to.

_J: Sometimes he does._

_L: I’m sorry to hear that. It might hamper my ability to disappear you as quickly as you might like._

_J: I understand. I’ll follow your lead and do whatever you think is best. I want to leave, but I want to be safe too. I don’t want Tyler to be suspicious._

_L: Of course not. The safety of my clients is my foremost priority._

_J: I know you’ll go over it in detail later, but do you mind telling me some of the things I’ll have to do after I disappear?_

_L: Not at all. One of the things you must do is to misdirect attention away from you. It’s hard to completely erase everything about you in this digital era, so a lot of it is about misdirection. One suggestion I have is to open a new bank account, put a little money in it, and give your bank card to someone you trust and have them spend a little money here and there across different cities, so if anyone is looking for you, they’ll be completely confused._

Liz’s eyes widened at his suggestion. It seemed obvious now, but she wouldn’t have thought of it immediately if she really was trying to disappear. But even then, if she really wanted to leave her life behind, who would she trust enough to give her bank information to? The only person in her life that resembled a close friend was Red, but she wouldn’t trust him not to spend all the money on antique books and expensive wine. But even then, she didn’t think Red would be a bad person to have at her side if she ever needed assistance in disappearing.

_J: I never would’ve thought of that, thank you!_

_L: A lot of this will be up to you, but I’ll help you with much of this, you know. I’ll do things like create fake online identities with your name, so if any information about you does creep up, it’ll be buried under false information._

Liz swiveled in the chair to face Aram. He scooted back an inch, putting space between them. At least he hadn’t jumped that time.

“Do you think I should mention something about Chase now, or would it be too early?” She leaned away from the screen so Aram could see her conversation with Leane more clearly.

“I don’t know your case as well as you do, Detective Keen,” he said with a grimace. “But I do know Lionel Leane, and even if he seems kind, he’s suspicious about everything.”

That wasn’t a particularly helpful answer, but she supposed she couldn’t be too angry with someone that wasn’t even directly involved with her case. If anything, the homicide division was encroaching on precious time that Cyber could’ve spent doing other important things.

“Well, I can’t keep this going on too long.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I suppose I’ll have to take the risk.”

She settled her hands on the keyboard again.

_J: Chase really meant it when he said you were the best he knew._

Liz sat back in the chair. The space beneath her text remained blank, void even of the message letting her know Leane was typing. Throughout their conversation, he had been responding almost immediately. Did the pause mean that he was suspicious of her mention of Chase, or had he been distracted by something?

 _L is typing_ , the text at the bottom finally informed her.

She exhaled.

_L: Remind me how you knew Chase?_

Leane knew very well how Janice supposedly knew Chase—she’d included all that information in the e-mail. He could go back and look at it himself if he wanted to. He was probably testing her.

_J: Oh, I initially became acquainted with his wife, so Chase and I became acquainted too._

_L: How did Chase say he knew about me?_

_J: He said he had a friend that used you once, and when he heard about my problems, he said maybe you could be of help to me._

_L: Did he tell you who this friend was?_

Liz gnawed at the bottom of her lip. The information she’d read about Leane told her he was cautious, and Aram had reconfirmed that fact moments ago, but his sudden barrage of questions had set her on edge. She wanted to find Red and get his input on it, but she had decided she was going to do this primarily by herself. It was her plan, and hers to execute, whether or not it went to pieces.

_J: No, he didn’t. I assumed he wanted to protect his friend’s identity._

_L: Of course._

It was a curt answer, but at least he hadn’t fired back with another question. She wanted to ask more about Chase, but she very narrowly avoided a disaster. Veering back onto the relevant topic at hand was in order.

_J: How long do you think we need to talk before you begin the process?_

_L: It always varies. Sometimes the preparation only takes a month or so if my client doesn’t have a lot of loose ends that need to be wrapped up. But the more complicated the situation, sometimes longer it can take to erase traces of their old life and find a new identity for them._

_J: If I survived with Tyler for two years, I can wait a few more months._

_L: I need to go now, but I’ll talk again with you soon. Does today at 3:30 PM work for you?_

_J: Yes, it does._

_L: We’ll talk then_.

Leane logged off only seconds after his last message. She slumped back against her chair and shuffled the papers sitting on the desk, setting them back down into the file lying near the keyboard. She’d probably end up going over notes until their next discussion.

* * *

The quality of the photographs wasn’t as good as Red might’ve hoped, but at least he had them. It wasn’t that he had doubted Aram’s ability to eventually find the photographs from the 1978 fire, but he hadn’t known how long it would take for him to track them down in between the sting operation and whatever else Aram was dealing with.

But there the evidence was right in front of him. The gas can from the ‘78 fire, and the photographs of the cans from the four crime scenes perpetrated by the serial arsonist he’d been tasked with tracking down years ago. The can in the older images was unrefined—obviously not manufactured on an assembly line. It was handmade just as the cans from the four other scenes.

The ‘78 can was metal and dented, one side of it a bit shorter than the others, clear marks where the can had been welded together. And on the side of it, there was a curved mark slashed into the side of it. The mark seemed to have been made in a moment of passion and frenzy. The lines that made it up were quick and jagged, but it still resembled an S, and was on the left side of the can, just as the other stamps were.

The homemade metal cans in the other photographs were more refined, the characteristic of someone having carefully developed their technique. He’d seen the same thing once in a serial killer case he’d been tasked with. The first murder was messy, the ropes on the victim’s wrists tied so loosely that the victim had gotten several scratches in before they were stabbed. After that, the killer had always tied his knots so firmly they dug into his victims’ skin.

With the photographs, Red at least had some sort of confirmation that the same arsonist was likely responsible for the deaths of Elizabeth’s parents. But that still didn’t explain why they had been killed. The serial arsonist performed arson for hire on criminals, not ordinary citizens. He tapped one finger against the corner of one of the ‘78 photographs, where the battered can lay in a pile of debris, the metal smeared with black streaks of ash. The articles he’d dug into the first night he’d investigated the Rostov fire, there had been no mention of whether any fingerprints had been recovered from the can, but he doubted any were found. None had ever been recovered from the other arsonist’s crime scenes. He’d probably burned his fingerprints off early on in his fire bug career.

Had the Rostovs simply been practice for what would come later? Other criminals started off their life of crime with illegal activities that didn’t always completely fit the pattern of their later crimes, so he supposed it was possible the Rostovs were simply the victims of a homicidal experiment.

But there was also the possibility that they’d been involved in something illegal. Perhaps it had been the arsonist’s first paid crime. Mention of the Rostovs been involved in crime hadn’t been in any of the articles, but if he went further than a cursory search, perhaps there would be something in old reports. He would make a note to do a search on it tonight.

As he straightened the papers and placed them back into the file, he raised his head and saw Elizabeth coming across the room, fly away hairs surrounding her face, no doubt from having ran her fingers through her hair in frustration. He closed the folder and slid it between several others on his side of the desk where he doubted she would disturb it. Still, the thought of her finding him poking into her past made him oddly uncomfortable. He would tell her eventually, but not until he was certain of all the facts. She deserved to have clarity about her parents deaths, not more questions.

Elizabeth completely ignored her chair and sat down on the edge of the end of the desk, one foot tapping against the floor. “I think Leane might be getting suspicious,” she said, leaning her head back, nostrils flaring in a sigh. “I casually mentioned Chase, and he started playing twenty questions with me about how “Janice” knew Chase, like he was trying to trip me up or something.”

“Did your mention of Chase seem casual or forced?” Red knew she was a capable woman, but this was still her first sting, and her target was a notorious identity broker no less. It would be inevitable she would make some sort of error.

She shrugged. “Leane was talking about the process of making a person disappear, and I told him he really was as good as Chase said. That doesn’t seem forced to me.”

“Leane wouldn’t have stayed out of prison this long if he wasn’t paranoid,” he said, trying to reassure her. It didn’t sound as if her transition onto the topic of Chase had been forced, and it wouldn’t help her any if she got worked up thinking she’d done something wrong. If she did, she might make a worse error.

“Yeah, that’s what Aram said too. Have you two been comparing notes during your private talks?” She lowered her head and leaned over to him, giving a teasing smile.

He assumed that she was referring to his earlier desire to talk to Aram in private about the ‘78 photographs. Though she didn’t know about them, he had to force himself not to glance at the stack of folders where the photographs lay sandwiched in the middle.

“Unfortunately, Aram is not particularly interested in comparing notes. I suspect it’s because he has very little in the way of notes to compare in regards to women—”

“…Well, I should be getting back to the computer. Leane scheduled another chat with me.” Liz slid carefully off the desk so as not to disturb her section of files.

Before she could leave again, Red stood and took a step towards her. “Do you need help with Leane?” he asked, searching her face for signs of the frustration that had been in it earlier. He wanted the sting to go smoothly, but if he could help her at all, he would be more than glad to be of assistance.

Liz’s face was blank for a moment, perhaps as she thought about whether to take him up on his offer. He had other things to do, but he hoped she would agree.

“No, I’ve got this,” she said, crossing her arms and nodding. “Aram and the rest of the Cyber department is at my disposal if I need help. You’ve got your own leads to follow up on. I don’t need to waste your time.”

She reached out and lay a hand on his shoulder for a moment, a fond smile on her face. It made him briefly forget to breathe.

“But if I really need anything from you, I’ll be sure to let you know,” she said, then dropped her hand, took a step back, and walked away.

* * *

_L: And then you’ll slowly start lowering your activity on social media. You don’t want to completely disappear at first, that’ll look suspicious. Sometimes I advise clients to talk on their social media about how they might be moving somewhere—Atlanta, for example—, but that place won’t be where I actually send them._

_J: It’s another misdirection trick, like with the bank cards._

_L: Exactly. Now, we’ll have to figure out whether to do that with you or not. If Tyler closely monitors what you do on the indexed sections of the Internet, we might not be able to spread that kind of false information since we’d risk him thinking you’re really going to move away from him. As I’ve said, your safety is most important._

_J: I have a few more private accounts where I can post about that._

Liz and Leane had been talking for the past forty five minutes about how to start disappearing. Even though she wasn’t doing so, the sheer effort and intricacy that went with destroying your old life and creating a new one made her head pound. There had been a few times after the divorce that she’d briefly fantasized—with little seriousness—about leaving her old, broken life and leaving it for something new, starting over with a blank slate and empty page, where she was free to write anything she wanted. She didn’t have to be a sad, lonely cop living out of motel rooms. She could’ve been anything. She could be a writer, a mediocre singer, a disk jockey…in the fantasies it didn’t matter what she became, just as long as it wasn’t the miserable woman she really was.

_L: That’s good. Now, as soon as tomorrow, I’d like to start the process setting up some fake online identities with your name._

_J: That works for me._

_L: I just need to ask to make sure you understand the gravity of your situation: You’re not afraid of disappearing after what happened to Chase?_

Liz’s fingers froze on the keyboard. Her eyes widened and her pulse quickened at her throat. She glanced to the corner where Aram sat, writing out paperwork. She didn’t want to bother him unless something was clearly going wrong. Even if Leane was trying to test her, his mention of Chase’s death didn’t necessarily mean anything. Though the MPD had been holding important information back, there had been a few articles online and in the papers about Chase’s murder. It only made sense that someone like Leane, whom essentially lived online, would have heard about it.

_J: No, I’m not. You think his death had something to do with you?_

_L: You said he told you it was a friend of his that used my services. After some research, I’ve found that I helped Chase once. It might be possible that his death had something to do with that._

How could he have known that? She supposed that if Leane had helped Chase, he might have known what their John Doe was running from, or the motive for the murder could have simply been speculation on his part.

_J: I can’t stay in my life anymore. I’m willing to take my chances and trust your abilities._

_L: You know, there’s something else strange about his death._

_J: What?_

_L: Apparently the police found a piece of paper with my name on it amongst his things._

Liz swallowed, the tips of her fingers going numb. That detail hadn’t been in any of the information released to the public. Leane’s involvement had been closely guarded. There was no way for the identity broker himself to know about the paper unless someone had accessed MPD databases or Leane himself was somehow involved in the murder.

Her eyes flicked again to Aram.

He was hunched close over the paperwork, pen scribbling away.

She turned back to the screen.

While she looked away, he typed _, L: I find it strange that a few weeks after they found that piece of evidence you contacted me saying you knew him. I haven’t heard anything about Chase for years._

_J: Coincidences are funny that way, I guess._

_L: Are you with law enforcement, “Janice”? Is that why you contacted me?_

**No**. Things couldn’t be going wrong, not so soon. If she was to make a colossal mistake, it should’ve been later into the sting with Leane. Had she really been so transparent that he had suspected her so soon?

She couldn’t ignore the problem anymore. She had to get Aram’s advice.

“Um…” Liz scooted her chair away from the computer. Aram’s head lifted an inch.

“I think we have a problem.”


	17. Chapter 17

“He said that if the MPD agrees not to pursue him, he’ll give up the John Doe’s identity?”

She sat across from Cooper at his desk, her back pressed against against the chair, rigid and tense. Only a few days ago she’d been sitting in that same chair, excited to tell him about her ambitious plan to pull Chase’s real identity out of Leane, and now she was having to face up to the consequences of her failure to maintain her cover for two days. It made her want to kick the wall, but she very much doubted that would win Cooper over.

“Yes, that’s what he said. When he blew my cover, I talked my options over with Aram, and we agreed that it was best and take the risk and tell him I was with law enforcement,” she said, keeping her voice flat and professional.

Cooper’s face didn’t change at her confession that she hadn’t consulted him first before telling Leane what she really was. He just scooted his chair an inch closer to the desk. He ran a thumb over his lower lip. “You realize what a risk that was.”

Liz swallowed and nodded. “I do, but neither I nor Aram felt like I had much of a choice. I understand that you may be angry—”

“You don’t need to put words in my mouth, Detective Keen,” Cooper said, voice firm. His eyes had narrowed, if only for bit. She was watching each micro expression on his face, trying to discern what he was thinking. “I’m not happy with how things have gone, but I briefly reviewed the transcript of your conversations with Leane, and it doesn’t appear that you said anything to him that obviously tipped him off to the fact that you’re a detective.”

“Sir, what do you want me to do? Leane is only giving us one day to think the deal over.” Liz slid to the edge of her chair and raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t going to shout at him, but Cooper sometimes liked giving things quite a bit of thought before acting, and they didn’t have that luxury with Leane.

Cooper removed his glasses and rubbed his forehead with two fingers. She didn’t think that was a good sign. “If we agree to this deal, there’s a chance that he could be bluffing that he knows the John Doe’s real identity. If that’s true, he’ll get away, cyber crimes won’t be able to pursue him on any other cases, and we’ll have nothing to show for it.”

“Yes, but the chance that he knows the Doe’s identity is better than not, and if we don’t take the deal, we’ll probably never solve this murder. The lab hasn’t come up with any matches on his DNA, fingerprints, or dental records, and our missing person’s department can’t seem to find anyone in the database that matches this guy. And the other evidence we have is disparate—”

Cooper held up a hand. Her mouth shut with a click.

“Keen, I understand. This is your first case, and it’s a strange case at that. I know you want to solve it, but you won’t be able to find the killer on every case you’re assigned.”

“So you want me to just let this go?” Liz couldn’t keep the sharpness out of her voice.

“No, but we need to discuss this more before losing the chance to catch Leane in the future. What does Reddington think?” Cooper glanced toward the closed office door as if expecting her partner to walk in.

“He—we haven’t talked about this breakthrough yet. Everything happened so suddenly that after admitting to Leane that I’m part of the Chase Schneider investigation, I immediately went to you,” she said, and as she said the words, she realized how it would sound to Cooper—like she was some over achieving rookie that was taking on more than she could handle, so eager to prove herself that she was leaving her partner out of the loop. Was that really she’d been doing?

“…Well, I suppose we’d better tell him, then. It’s his case too.”

She didn’t miss Cooper’s emphasis on the last sentence. Cooper picked up his phone from the side of his desk, tapped the screen, and waited for a moment as it rang patiently. Soon enough, someone answered on the other end.

“Reddington, please come to my office for a moment. You, Detective Keen, and I have something about the Schneider case we need to discuss.” Cooper fiddled with his glasses in his free hand, tapping his finger against a scratch on his desk as if he noticed it for the first time.

She couldn’t make out Red’s answer, but it sounded drawled and uncertain. Cooper ended the call.

* * *

Red leaned back in the chair next to her, looking immensely comfortable despite the fact that she knew for certain that the chairs in Cooper’s office had a tendency to make the lower section of one’s back stiff.

“Well, I assume this is important enough to have interrupted me while I was trying to harass the lab into delivering the DNA results?” Red’s foot made slow, lazy circles in the air as he looked at Cooper with disinterest. The way he spoke to his superiors often surprised her and made her jealous. If he was anyone else, they probably would’ve kicked him out of the MPD years ago, but he had one of the highest solve rates in the homicide unit. That alone was worth putting up with him.

“It seems that the identity thief—”

“Identity broker,” Red automatically corrected.

Cooper’s shoulders lifted in a sigh. “It seems that Lionel Leane figured out that Keen is part of the Schneider investigation. He seems to have put this together partially through somehow gaining access to confidential information about the case’s evidence.”

Liz bit the inside of her cheek, her eyes straight on Cooper as she felt Red’s gaze sweep over to her. Would his opinion of her return to what it had been when they first met? She didn’t want to return to being dismissed by him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, voice a bit quieter than normal. She didn’t think Cooper would notice, but she did.

She jerked her head to face him, her chin lowered. Red wasn’t seething, and he didn’t even seem particularly angry just perhaps…disappointed. Or was it hurt in his eyes?

“Things happened quickly,” Liz said, the words almost running together. “I thought I could handle it myself, but—”

She closed her eyes and turned away from him. She crossed her arms. “That doesn’t matter now. The point is, Leane is offering to make a deal. If the MPD doesn’t pursue him for future crimes he’ll give us Chase’s real name. It’s a risk, but I think we should do it.”

The room was silent for awhile as all of them processed the information laid before them. Liz lay her hands in her lap, picking at the edge of her index finger. All she expected to deal with was trying to convince Cooper to take the deal, not also having Red’s reaction at not telling him crucial information. Why did his reaction bother her? Was it just that she wanted him to respect her and see her as an equal, and her mistake could damage that?

That was part of it, perhaps. But the look he’d given her…it made something inside her twinge.

“I agree with Keen,” Red finally said. “The lab is apparently manned by tortoises, and Schneider hasn’t appeared in any missing person’s databases. This is very likely one of our few chances to solve this case.”

Cooper tapped a finger against his desk and put his glasses back on, looking between the two of them. “All right. I’ll let Keen make the deal. But you two understand what this could mean?”

Liz bobbed her head. “Of course.”

In the corner of her eye, Red dipped his head in silent confirmation.

Cooper raised his eyebrows and lifted a hand toward the door. “Well, I suppose you’d better go make the deal with him, detectives.”

Liz rose from the chair as soon as she could, like it was covered in thorns prickling her legs. She didn’t want to stay in the room a moment longer with Cooper’s reluctant resignation towards the way her sting turned out.

“I will. Sir, _thank you_ ,” she said, turning her head over her shoulder, smiling at him. The smile hurt, and her palm was slick on the doorknob with sweat that she hadn’t realized was there, but she managed to open the door without making herself look clumsy.

She waited for Red outside Cooper’s office, leaning one hip against the wall, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the drinking fountain in front of her, with the dozens of smudged fingerprints on the metal. She couldn’t imagine what a nightmare it would be to be involved in a case where a drinking fountain was a primary piece of evidence.

She kept her head lowered when the door squeaked open and Red walked out, only lifting it when he came close enough that she couldn’t ignore him. Liz dropped her hands and leaned her weight against one leg. “I guess we’d better go talk to Leane, then.”

She could sense the still awkward undercurrent between them, but that could be addressed later, even if she dreaded it. They needed to put their misunderstanding aside for the sake of the case.

His eyes flicked up to look at her. He frowned. “Do you not trust me, Elizabeth?”

She pressed a hand to her face and rubbed her temple. Maybe they _did_ have to hash this out before they could deal with Leane. “Red, no, it’s—”

She spread her arms and sighed. “That’s not it. I wanted to work on this part of the case by myself, because I was the one that came up with the plan for the sting. I needed to succeed or fail on my own terms, and when I felt that things could be going wrong, I didn’t want to get you involved. That’s all.”

That wasn’t all, though. That was some of it, but part of her knew that her actions had also been dictated by her own stubbornness and the desire for his respect. Of course, Red said that he was impressed with what she’d done so far, but if she could’ve pulled the sting off without a hitch, then he _really_ would’ve thought she was doing something right.

“That was irresponsible of you,” he said, mouth pinched.

At that, blood rushed to her cheeks and her face grew hot. She knew it was, but she didn’t need to be told off by him. “We can talk about this later, Reddington. We need to deal with Leane right now, not whatever issues you have with—”

He placed a hand on her shoulder. She inhaled, her mouth twitching, jaw tight. She turned her head half way to stare at him out of the corner of her eye. 

“I’m not saying this to disparage you. I’m saying it because I care about you and don’t wish to see you sabotage yourself through your own weaknesses. Your future as a homicide detective is…” his eyes softened, “immeasurably bright. Don’t damage your future because you’re afraid of needing help.”

Liz felt like she had the wind knocked from her lungs. What was she supposed to say to that? How _could_ she know what to say? He wasn’t angry because her decisions might hurt the case, or that it might even reflect badly on him. He was just concerned for her sake. Because he cared about _her_. She didn’t know how long it had been since someone told her that.

“Are you okay to do this? I will talk to Leane if you’re not up to it.” He tilted his head to catch her eyes, his thumb brushing over the fabric covering her shoulder.

She folded her arms, tucking her hands into her armpits. “Yeah, I can do it. Come with me, though. I might need you.”

His body and face were still, but she didn’t miss the slight smile that appeared at the edge of his mouth. “Very well.”

Red’s hand slid off her shoulder, but his fingers dragged away slowly, like he was almost reluctant to let go. She turned around and went left, heading toward the cyber crimes department, head lifted, ignoring the officers around her that only barely got out of her way.

She stopped at the door of Aram’s office and wrapped her fingers around the door frame, leaning in. “Is he still online?”

Aram's pen stuttered on a paper he was working on. He looked at her over his shoulder, then at the dark screen, the white text of her past conversations with Leane dotted across the screen. “Yeah, he is. Did Cooper agree to the deal?”

Liz slid her hand off the wall and slid into the office. “He did,” she said, trying to keep her tone light and a smile on her face. She still didn’t feel particularly triumphant.

Aram’s head lifted as Red walked in behind her. “Oh, Detective Reddington. Are you—” he fumbled with the papers he was holding. “I didn’t expect you.”

“Yes, well,” Red shrugged and sauntered over to the corner, leaning one shoulder against the wall. “I’m not going to miss discovering the identity of the John Doe that’s been giving me grief. You can’t very well curse a man’s name when you don’t know it.”

Aram’s forehead creased, but he just scooted away so Liz could drag up a second charge in front of the computer. _L is online_ , the white text told her. She inhaled and pushed her shoulders back. She couldn’t go back from this. Once the deal was done, it was done. The MPD couldn’t go after him, but she supposed that didn’t mean a police department in another state couldn’t. And if she was being honest with herself, did she really want to see Leane eventually arrested? True, he brokered identities, but only to help people disappear whose lives were dangerous or falling apart.

She couldn’t be thinking about the morality of what he did, or what she was doing. All that mattered was Chase.

J _: Okay, my superior approved the deal. Who was Chase Schneider?_

_L: I’m glad to see you again, Detective Keen._

_J: Please answer the question, Mr. Leane. Based on my research, you’re a man of your word._

_L: You trust me?_

_J: I trust that you have your own code, and you’ll stick to it._

_L: Chase Schneider was an investigative journalist eight years ago whose real identity was Beck Morley._

_J: Do you know why he disappeared or why he was killed?_

_L: The deal was for his name, nothing else._

_J: If you cared about him, I’d expect you’d tell me what he was running from._

_L: …Beck was an acquaintance, and I helped him when he needed it, but I didn’t ask why he needed to disappear. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if his death was connected to whatever he was running from. Beck investigated dangerous people and made a lot of enemies, and some of those enemies have long memories. I don't doubt some of them wouln't have hesitated to kill him if they knew he was still alive._

_J: How did you know we found your name in his things?_

_L: I know people that hear things._

_J: I suppose I couldn’t expect you not to protect your hacker friends._

_L: As you observed, Miss Keen, I believe in honor._

_J: Okay, I understand that, but do you know why he had your name?_

_L: I don’t know. I hadn’t heard from Beck in years. Perhaps he kept my name at his ghost address for someone to find in case something happened to him, or to just have it on hand if he ever needed to contact me again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to leave. Goodbye, Detective Keen. I honestly do hope you discover what happened to Beck._

_Lionel Leane has logged off_ , the screen said.

Liz’s hands pulled away from the keyboard. She slumped in her chair.

“…I’m sorry you won’t be able to go after him in the future, Aram,” she said, scratching a nail against the desk.

“I was never involved in a case against him. I’m just glad you were able to get what you needed, Detective Keen.” Aram’s eyes flicked up to her. He gave her a small, reassuring smile.

Liz didn’t know if he was being sincere, or if he just didn’t want her to feel badly about how the sting turned out. He wasn’t the sort of person to lambaste someone for their mistakes. Though, she supposed, everyone had their limits when it came to patience, but she apparently hadn’t crossed a line in his eyes.

“Thanks, but I do need to get back to my department. Now that we have a name, Reddington and I need to look into this guy.” She pressed her palms into the arms of the chair and stood up, glancing over at Red.

Red peeled himself off of the wall, following her silent signal. He hadn’t said anything while she talked to Leane, and she didn’t think he would’ve hesitated to offer a piece of advice if she said something wrong. Perhaps she had ended the sting with some amount of dignity. As they walked out of Aram’s office together, he touched the middle of her back to stop her. She turned on heel to look up at him and saw that there was warm fondness in his eyes.

“You did it. You figured out who our damn John Doe was,” he shook his head and laughed softly. “Don’t discount that, Elizabeth.”

The gentle way he said her name made her stomach flutter. “Yeah, I did,” she said, a grin creeping across face. “I got Lionel Leane— _the_ infamous identity broker--to give me the name. No one with law enforcement has gotten him to talk before, have they?”

“I don’t believe so,” he said, his own smile growing as he looked at her.

Liz leaned back against the wall, and tipped her head back, exhaling. She shook her head, the brick scratching at her scalp. “I didn’t think—”

She covered her mouth and gave a sudden laugh. “ _I did it_ ,” she said, breathless, half to herself. “Come on, let’s figure out what Mr. Morley was up to eight years ago.”

* * *

“Beck could’ve been killed by any of these guys,” Liz huffed, tossing the stack of papers she’d been reading onto the desk, where they fluttered to half land on a pile Red had been looking at.

“Look what you’ve done. You’ve covered up a very lovely mug shot I was looking at!” he said, scooting her papers back over to her. "Mr. Frank Wilson here wouldn't thank you for that."

“Look at this—mob bosses, con men, dirty politicians and businessmen…” She flicked to a new page each time she listed off a new category. “Beck worked all over the country too.”

“At the very least, it appears that your analysis at the crime scene was correct.” Red’s eyes lowered, watching her flip through the papers, eyes scanning the movements of her hands.

“Which analysis?” She had made several—some about the possible psychology of the murderer, as well as the likelihood that the killer hadn’t been a robber that killed Beck by chance. The robber theory seemed the least likely of all of them at the moment.

“That the killer was experienced in what he did.” Red looked at her from beneath his eyelids, and though she’d seen him make that same, leisurely glance upward several times before, this time it made her shift in her seat.

“Well, yes, now that we know the kind of people he was digging into, I think it’s fair to say any one of them has a decent amount of experience in murder.” She leaned her elbow against the photograph of a gang member who glared hard into the camera. 

The problem they had before was having no suspect at all—now they were overwhelmed by a plethora of unsavory men and women who doubtlessly would have shot Beck in the chest without a thought.

“People like this don’t like getting their hands dirty. It’s beneath them and leaves a trail.” Red waved a hand over the papers in front of them like their new pool of suspects were a deck cards sporting the faces of murderous characters.

“A _hit man_?” She raised an eyebrow. Of course hit men existed, but they weren’t exactly common place. “Red, come on. Most murders don’t involve a middle man.”

Red pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow back at her. “Elizabeth, as I’m sure you’re all too _keenly_ aware, this isn’t a typical murder.”

“Did you just…make a pun on my last name?” She leaned her hand on her chin, letting her knuckles cover her mouth to suppress a smile.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, tilting his chair back. “Not intentionally. Please, if I ever try to make another pun, you have permission to chastise me.”

“You’re a snob about humor now?” She tapped her fingers against her cheek. “You know, Oscar Wilde said sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, which you have in spades.”

The chair squeaked as he leaned forward again scooted closer to her. “It is comforting to know that Cooper partnered me with someone that appreciates Wilde,” he said, voice quiet, face close to her ear. He was close enough that she could feel his warmth.

Though deflection was primarily Red’s preferred method of changing the topic, it was her turn. She turned her shoulder to him. “Okay, so if you think one of these people Beck looked into hired a hit man, how do you want to investigate this? It could take months to go through all of them.”

“You’re concentrating on the entire ocean when you only need to look at one specific section of it.” He reached out, slow and languid, and dropped several papers in her lap. “These are some reports on Beck’s behavior in the last two months before he disappeared.”

She eyed the papers before picking them up. On the first page, there was a photograph of Beck, eight years younger and without the plastic surgery that was found in the autopsy. His eyes were light blue, and his smile was wide, bright and entirely genuine. His thick, brown hair was combed to the side, slick with some kind of hair product. It was the face of a man that was confident and optimistic, someone that thought he could conquer anything put in front of him.

It was a face that people would open doors to and tell their secrets to, a boyish, handsome man with the strong jaw of a politician with the benefit of _not_ being a politician.

It wasn’t the face of a man that should’ve become a ghost, isolating himself in his home, barely interacting with anyone besides his wife and daughter. It wasn’t the face of a man whose life should’ve been ended in an alley, a bullet lodged in the soft flesh of his heart, homicide detectives picking over his remains in a desperate search for clues to his untimely demise.

But Red was right. This was what she learned in college—observe the evidence at hand, make a picture from it, then create several plausible narratives. Somewhere in his last months before disappearing, the answer was there.

She scrubbed a hand through her hair again, making a worse mess of it than it already was after the day she’d had. “You’re right. We’ll look through this tomorrow, but right now it’s time to go home. We need our rest.” She craned her neck to the clock on the wall, the gentle rustle of papers and shuffle of shoes sounding through the homicide department. They were the natural, restless noises of people tired and ready to go home to apartments and houses and spouses and children.

And both she and Red would be going back to their respective apartments with no one of note to return to. At that moment, she wanted very much to have the luxury of knowing that there would be someone at home waiting for her.

Red’s expression was distant, his mind in some place beyond the station. She wondered if he had similar thoughts to hers.

She dropped the papers on Beck’s disappearance into a folder that contained research on the people Beck investigated. “See you tomorrow, Red. I doubt we’ll find anything as significant as we did today, but maybe we’ll make some kind of headway.”

Red stood from his chair, head lowered as he ran a hand over the edge of their desk. His jaw moved back and forth. “Do you mind if I walk to the parking lot with you?”

Her mouth half opened. “No, not at all.” She pressed the folder to her chest.

At her answer, the ghost of an absent smile crossed his face before he turned away from her and pulled his jacket off the back of the chair, shaking it out and running a hand over the fabric, smoothing out wrinkles she couldn’t see. Once he was done, he came up next to her with a folder of his own tucked under one arm, walking in stride beside her as they exited the homicide department along with everyone else.

As they walked together, the thought of him going into her apartment with her crossed her mind, but she quickly shoved the idea aside. It was late, she was drained, and she was feeling a bit lonely. That was all.

Soon they stopped beside his car, which was dusted with a coat of rain droplets shimmering on the surface illuminated by the light above them. He buttoned the top of his jacket. She wrapped her arms tighter around the folder in case another downpour of rain came and threatened to smear the ink of the reports.

“’Night,” she said, lips pressed together, fingers curling tightly around the folder.

But he didn’t unlock his car right away. He took a step closer to her, eyes flicking across her face. He lifted a hand, reaching toward her face, his fingers still and hesitant for a moment, hovering in the air between them. She swallowed, unsure of what either of them were about to do next. They were both lonely people, she knew that. And loneliness could lead to mistakes.

He pushed a long strand of hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. The tips of his fingers brushed against her cheek as he withdrew his hand.

“Goodnight,” he said, the lines around his eyes wrinkling as he smiled.

Liz knew what sad smiles looked like.


	18. Chapter 18

A cold, microwaved dinner that had barely been dented by her fork lay on the coffee table next to the sofa. Liz adjusted her head on the pillow, the edge of it pressing into her cheek, flipping the papers over in her hand. Beck looked up at her again, wide eyed and innocent as he had been when she’d first looked at that photograph before she left the station that night.

Perhaps she should’ve waited until tomorrow before going over the reports. She did need some down time, but when she sat down with her Marie Calender’s meal warm from the microwave, picked up the remote to scroll through Netflix’s selections, Beck’s file sat there on her small coffee table, the beige cover of the folder begging her to pick it up.

She pulled her further up and flicked through the pages, scanning over the presented information. As she read through the reports and articles, she soon picked up on a pattern—Beck was gradually withdrawing from his life. Three months before he disappeared, he made a few posts on his blog about considering moving to San Diego for a few years, and when the police went through his computer after he disappeared, they found various searches pertaining to housing and the cost of living in San Diego.

Two months after the posts on his blog, he made an announcement saying he was going to take a break from social media in order to concentrate full time on an in depth, complex investigation. Excerpts from the blog post were quoted in several of the articles about his disappearance, but the full thing didn’t appear to be among the papers Red gave her. She’d have to find it herself.

As her eyes started to droop while she plunged through page after page on Beck’s activities, she sat up on the sofa, placing the pillow behind her back. She dropped her chin into her palm.

Beck’s activities before he disappeared had a familiar touch to them—the posts about moving, the slow withdrawl from his life, the trail on his computer that lead nowhere—they were all tactics Leane had suggested to “Janice”. Leane said he’d helped Beck disappear, but hadn’t elaborated on the details. She wondered if that was one of the first times he aided in someone’s disappearance. Red’s research said Leane started appearing on the Dark Web several years after Beck’s disappearance, so it was anyone’s guess what he’d been up to before that.

Liz arched her back and stretched, clamping her jaw to down to suppress a yawn. Perhaps she did need sleep. The case would be there in the morning. She shuffled the papers, reordering to put them back in the folder when she spotted a headline of an article. Madden Kellie Involved in Morley Disappearance?, it read.

 _Madden_. Was that the mysterious _M_ that Beck’s not referred to and that had delivered a letter to Beck’s ghost address? She pulled the article closer to her face and turned lamp next to her up. (Maybe she really did need glasses, she noted. She didn’t mind the idea of matching Red if she did.)

_Mr. Madden Kellie, a member of the California State Senate, was interviewed by Beck Morley two years ago for a piece about prison reform in the United States. After wards, the two of them often mentioned each other in conversation and flew to each other’s respective states for a few visits, which showed quite a resolve on Kellie’s end, as Morley was known for leading a nomadic lifestyle._

_Now, three months after Morley’s disappearance, news has surfaced that a man similar in appearance to Kellie was seen talking to Morley the morning of his disappearance. The Portland police department declined to say much about this lead, only that they aren’t ruling Kellie’s possible involvement out._

The article went on to rehash information about Beck’s activities that she already knew, and how his car had been found abandoned beneath an overpass. Liz knelt on the couch and reach for her cell phone, where it had gotten pushed beneath the sofa after it tumbled to the floor when she flopped on the couch cushions.

She picked it up and lay on her back, squinting against the piercing glow of the screen. She turned the brightness down and went to her contacts. Liz selected Red’s name.

Her fingers hovered over the message box. She pressed a tooth into her bottom lip. What if he was asleep? Even if he wasn’t asleep, couldn’t she wait until morning to tell him? It wasn’t as if the evidence about Madden was suddenly going to disappear.

Her thumbs hit the screen, almost of their own volition.

_Hey, I found something in the articles and reports you gave me. I think I know who M might be._

She hit send, then dropped the phone on its face, her palm pressing onto the back of it. Nerves twisted in her stomach. What was wrong with her? It wasn’t like she’d texted him while in the depths of an emotional outburst, or after she’d had a bit too much wine. It was just about the case.

Then why did she feel like she was sixteen again and waiting for her crush to call her back?

The phone vibrated beneath her hand a few seconds later. She snatched it up.

_You’re being quite cryptic tonight. I do deeply appreciate that quality in the people I associate with, but in this case, I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to be a bit more forthcoming._

_One of the articles said he was good friends with a politician named Madden Kellie, and someone matching Kellie’s appearance was seen with Beck the day before he disappeared_ , she typed back.

A moment later, ellipses appeared on the screen. The image of Red sitting in his apartment, a forgotten book next to him as he wrote a message to her made her want to smile for reasons she didn’t want to fully analyze. Perhaps it was just how he’d acted toward her that day combined with her reluctance to be alone tonight that made her feel the way she did. That, and the thought of having a close connection to someone after having no one to confide in was likely just making her giddy.

 _I’ve known a few politicians in my day, and I’ve had to investigate a few of them too. I wouldn’t recommend it, but I suppose for the sake of the case, I shall swallow my distaste for them_ , he wrote, and the ellipses appeared again.

_Thank you for the information, I do very much appreciate it. We can further discuss it tomorrow. May you have pleasant dreams, Elizabeth._

She blinked, eyes stinging, but not from the glare of the screen She inhaled and shut her phone off.

His last sentence made her remember the ghost of his fingers against her cheek.

* * *

“Either Mr. Kellie is oddly free of anything scandalous—and free on anything remotely interesting about him—or he is one of the finest liars I have recently witnessed,” Red sipped at his coffee, the report on the Portland police department’s interview with Madden held loose in his hand.

“I’m guessing your money is on the latter?” She flicked two fingers at him to hand the papers over. Not looking away from his coffee, Red splayed his fingers against the report and slid it over to her.

“I wasn’t going to begin betting on his potential criminality, but I’m certainly willing to do so if you’re offering.” He set the coffee on the middle of the desk, eyes flicking to her purse like he expected her to start producing money for a bet at that moment.

“There’s probably a department rule against that,” she said, glancing back down at the report. If he stopped talking, she could more fully concentrate on it. But then, if she really wanted him to stop, she wouldn’t keep responding to his comments, would she?

Red exhaled sharply, sounding offended. “I’m not about to report my own partner if she wanted to partake in some harmless betting.”

She rolled her eyes, pointing the papers at him. “You’re just trying protect yourself.”

“If Mr. Kellie was lying, I would hazard a guess that he was protecting both himself and his friend. In his position, I would intend to do the same.” Red leaned against the side of his chair, smile gone from his face, and something flickered in his eyes, intense and vibrant. Around her, the homicide department buzzed with ambient conversation, squeaking chairs and shoes, but she still felt like the only one there—the subject of a macro photograph, all her sharp lines and edges put in hard focus as the background was fuzzed out.

Liz put the papers down and hunched over them, uncapping her pen and settling her eyes against the first lines of the report. She scribbled the nib of the pen in the corner of the report, trying to get the ink flowing again.

“Maybe Kellie helped him, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t turn against Beck later on. If Kellie is “M”, and Beck got money from him once, maybe he got money from him multiple times. What if Kellie got tired of sending funds?” She knew her theory had no basis, but at least it was a motive, and at least it gave them a concrete suspect.

“Kellie was pulling in a bloated paycheck every year. I’m sure he could’ve dug into his pockets and dropped a few alms into Beck’s account if need be,” Red said.

“Maybe he got in with someone dirty and they convinced him to turn against his friend?” She shrugged, tip of the pen skimming in the air over the dialogue between Madden and the Portland police.

Their conversation was nothing more than a circular back and forth between Madden and the detectives about where he’d been the morning Beck was seen with the man fitting his description. It wasn’t a very long back and forth either, because Madden had an answer and an alibi for everything—no, he hadn’t seen Beck that morning, he’d been at a meeting with three people from a prisoner advocacy group. No, Madden hadn’t seen Beck before his car was discovered, he’d at a benefit dinner that night when the car was found.

The only verifiable evidence linking the two of them that day was the fact that he and Beck were in Portland the same day. Nothing else. There wasn’t even a grainy security image of Beck and the Kellie look-alike meeting, only the word of two witnesses that came forward three months after Beck’s disappearance. When witnesses came forward that late, there was always the question of whether they were just trying to get attention, or whether they wanted to help and had naively invented details.

“Is there any particular reason why you’re fixated on the money motive?” Red asked.

“I just can’t think of another motive for Kellie to turn against Beck, though I suppose someone could’ve threatened him if he didn’t expose Beck’s new name and location.” She turned to the last page of the report, twirling her pen between her fingers. “Even if they were friends, we don’t know how close they really were, and threats can make people do things they wouldn’t otherwise.”

“I assume you haven’t looked deeply into Kellie’s political track record?” Red nodded to the darkened screen of her computer.

The pen stopped, pinched between two fingers. “I looked a little, but only at what seemed relevant.”

“Well, it seems that his opponents very much like threatening him, but he hasn’t backed down from his positions.” Red snorted and shook his head, eyes lowered to the Portland interview. “I’m finding myself almost admiring him.”

Red's admiration for Kellie spoke to his character. Despite the fact that Kellie was a politician, a career that her partner seemed to generally dislike, he viewed Kellie’s loyalty and his unflappable morals—or at least the _idea_ of them—with respect.

“Well, while you go doe eyed over our potential murder suspect, I’m going to find something to eat in the break room. I didn’t have anything for breakfast this morning.” She capped the pen and tossed it next to her laptop.

“Good luck. I heard tale that someone from Vice brought stew, but if Underhill got to it first, it’s almost certainly already gone. Doesn’t Underhill’s face remind you a bit of a vacuum? That…” he squinted and drew an invisible line in the air, “wide, slant it has.”

Liz slid off the seat and raised her eyebrows. “If I don’t get going, Underhill _will_ get to it.”

* * *

"Yeah, Keen somehow got that Schneider guy’s identity.” The voice came from the corner of the break room, and it glued Liz to the tiled floor.

She knew that voice. It was Decker, one of the officers in the missing person’s department, and also one of the people that had been gossiping about her on her second day as a homicide detective. She took a step back, wedging herself into the corner just behind the door leading to the break room. If she just walked in, they would probably stop talking about her, but she found that she needed to know what they were saying.

Someone whistled. “Guess Reddington hasn’t driven her crazy yet.”

“He wouldn’t need to, not with the way she screwed up the little sting operation she planned. Sure, she made some movement in the case, but she got her cover blown in two days,” Decker said, his voice raising, then dissolving into a barking laugh.

She ground her teeth so hard that her jaw hurt. It didn’t matter what they were saying. It didn’t change the fact that she found Chase was really Beck. She would’ve liked to see any one of them try their hand at deceiving an identity broker that made it part of his job to be paranoid abut everything. And had Decker been any help? No, he hadn’t. All he’d done was call she and Red twice to say that missing person’s still hadn’t found anything about their John Doe.

“Two days?” a third, female, voice asked, coughing as she swallowed a drink the wrong way.

“Sure, she was going after Lionel Leane, but—”

“Was she crazy? It would’ve just been easier to wait on the lab. She had no chance against Leane,” the second voice said, sharp and pinched.

Liz’s hand curled into fist, nails digging into the flesh of her palm. She could go into the break room, eyes full of fire, shoes smacking hard against the floor, and shout at them, enumerate off each success she’d had since coming into the homicide division. They thought she couldn’t deal with Red? Well, she had, and they made a good team. They thought she couldn’t match wits against Leane? Maybe she couldn’t keep up the charade for long, but he hadn’t talked to anyone else from law enforcement before either. Cover blown or no, she got the identity.

But if she went in there and did as her heart urged her to do, wouldn’t she be proving what they thought of her? That she was a childish new recruit that couldn’t handle a complicated case like the Schneider/Morley murder? If she let their barbs go and walked back to her desk, head held high, not a sign that she’d been rankled, then wouldn’t she prove them wrong?

She swallowed, her throat tight. At least her eyes didn’t burn. She couldn’t stand the thought of those idiots forcing her near tears.

She pursed her lips and exhaled, running a hand through her pony tail and dropped her hands at her sides, flexing her fingers, willing the clenched muscles in her body to relax. Turning sideways, she squeezed out of the space between the door and the wall, shutting her mind off to the continued gossip flowing from Decker and his two cohorts.

She would’ve made it back to her desk if not nearly colliding with a man front of her. She danced back on the tips of her toes and held up a hand, her fingers fluttering, hand briefly brushing against his chest before she backed up.

“I’m sorry, I was just—”

Her eyes flicked up. “Red—oh. I was heading back to the desk. Turns out you were right about Underhill and his abilities to inhale all available free food.”

His gaze drifted to the break room, where Decker was still talking. His jaw tightened, and she saw his shoulders shift and straighten beneath his suit jacket. It didn’t take formal psychological training to know what he was thinking about doing.

“I don’t care about them. Whatever you wanted to talk about, let’s just get to it and leave Decker to his gossip,” she said, not moving from where she stood in front of him.

Still, there was some part of her that longed to see Red tear into them. Even when she’d thought Tom had been a decent man, would she have believed that he would come to her defense if he heard someone putting her down? No. He would’ve simply shook his head and said that their opinion didn’t matter, because both she and Tom knew that those disparaging words weren’t true. And she would've agreed too, even if she wanted him to speak up, because that's what mature people did, didn't they?

“I’m not going to allow them to insult the decisions that you and I have made on this case,” he said, skin beneath his eye twitching as another round of laughter burst from Decker and the two other detectives.

Perhaps it was a matter of pride for him too, then. She hadn’t thought of it that way. Or was just she comforting herself by believing he was more concerned about his reputation? Had she simply wanted to believe that he was concerned enough to defend her?

Red stepped back and walked around her, entering the break room. The muscles in her neck tensed. She could follow him in and try to diffuse the situation and steer him back to their desk. She could refute what he was going to say.

Instead, Liz just backed up enough to be out of the sight of Decker and the others, but giving herself enough room to see what was going to happen. If she followed him in, she reasoned, Decker and his crew would think she went and cried to her partner and forced him to stick up for her. That would be worse than going in by herself to confront them. She would let Red do what he wanted for once without her interference. Better to let him say his piece than for her to follow him and disrespect herself even further.

“Ah, Sawyer. I see that you’ve ceased putting copious amounts of sweetener in your coffee. Was that by your doctor’s orders?” Red pulled one of the upper cupboards open and peered inside. “We’re always out of spoons, aren’t we? Is it Lawson that constantly takes them?” He eased cupboard door closed with a sigh.

Sawyer, one of the detectives with Decker, put her coffee down on the table. She picked at the salad on her paper plate.

“Decker, you know, I couldn’t help overhearing you mentioning Keen’s name.” Red placed his hands behind his back and looked toward the ceiling as if in deep thought.

“…Yeah,” Decker said, glancing at his two friends. Seeing his uncertainty made Liz smirk.

“Tell me, how much headway have you made on the Weston case?” Red curled his fingers around the edge of the counter.

“I’m making _some_ progress—”

“Ah, how about the Brunet case?”

“Well, I—”

“Oh!” Red all but launched himself off the counter. “Jamie, did Decker ever tell you Caygil case?”

Jamie’s eyes slid to Decker, who was starting to turn a strange, pale shade.

“I recall it _so_ vividly.” Red crossed his hands in front of him, running his tongue over his bottom teeth. “I wasn’t involved with it at all, but I might as well have been—I believe this was before your time Jamie, that’s probably why you don’t remember—but stories of how Decker misplaced the evidence were up and down the entire station for weeks. If you sneezed, no one would say bless you. Instead they said, ‘Did you hear about Decker’?”

Decker’s forehead was glistening under the lights, and Sawyer and Jamie’s eyes shifting back and forth. Sawyer picked up her coffee, touched it with the tip of her finger, shook it, and put it down again.

Red looked between them, raising his eyebrows. “What? Was the sneezing metaphor too obtuse? It was, wasn’t it? Oh well.”

He leaned forward and patted Decker on the shoulder, teeth clenched in a tight smile. “So good to see you again, Decker. It’s always _immensely_ enjoyable to talk to you.”

He stepped back, and lowered his head, eyes flicking up to the doorway, his gaze landing out her. He gave her a wide smile—one entirely genuine, not the forced, hostile one he’d given Decker. “Elizabeth! There you are. I was wondering where you’d gone.”

She almost wanted to scowl at him for not letting her remain hidden and watch the exchange anonymously. But she couldn’t, not after what he’d done for her. Besides, perhaps revealing herself would give Decker one last figurative kick in the gut. So she stepped into the doorway, smiling as if she was seeing them all together for the first time.

“I was just walking by. What’s going on?”

“I’m afraid Lawson has taken all of the spoons again.” Red reached over and opened the cupboard, showing her the bare spot where the box of plastic spoons should have been.

Liz walked up to him and stood on her toes, like she needed to confirm for herself the spoons were gone. She groaned. “ _Again_?”

“You know,” he said, turning his head to her, voice lowered, “if it soothes your frustrations, I can take you to lunch.”

He had to do that, didn’t he? He _had_ to begin flirting, and in front of a group of other officers too. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to care very much. Red had humiliated Decker, and now all of them knew once and for all that she was staying. She hadn’t been scared off by Red. 

She raised her hands in the air. “I’m not opposed to it.”

“Good! Then we’re going. I have just the place in mind that I believe you’ll love. I could probably even get us a discount since I once proved that the owner’s brother _didn’t_ commit murder,” he said, walking out as she followed behind him.

Once they were far enough down the hallway that the three other officers couldn’t hear her, she wrapped her hand around his arm. He stopped instantly, like a horse attuned to the subtle touches of its rider.

“You didn’t have to do that, but…thank you,” she said, letting go of his arm.

“Of course I had to. I couldn’t stand by and watch them slander you,” he said, and the heat in his voice surprised her.

Did she really matter _that_ much to him? How could she really be worth that level of intensity? She wasn’t a bad detective, but she wasn’t yet good enough to inspire that level of devotion.

“It’s just that no one ever…” she pressed her lips together, running a hand over her mouth. She couldn’t afford to become emotional.

“You deserve it, Lizzie.”

It was the nickname that made her look up again. She rarely heard anyone call her that anymore. It had become so uncommon that hearing it now made her chest ache. It was like hearing an old favorite song she hadn’t heard in years, and the sound of it brought comfort and the throb of nostalgia, and the inevitable question of why you’d gone so long without hearing it.

She took his arm again.

“Let’s go to lunch.”


	19. Chapter 19

The only downside to the place that Red had taken her to lunch was that the owner was too friendly towards Red. He came by every few minutes, hovering, wiping his palms against the apron he was wearing, waiting for her small talk with Red to trail off. Liz hadn’t been talking about anything important with him, but every time the owner came by, it was prolonging the amount of time she would have to wait to hear whatever news Red had.

“…So, yeah—my friend calls me up at 3 AM, I get to his restaurant, and there are lobsters everywhere.” The owner spread his hands, indicating how the lobsters had been scattered across the floor.

Red’s eyebrows shot up. “It sounds like the crustaceans had conducted a jail break.”

The owner put his hands on his hips, looking down and laughing. “I know, right? But here’s the thing—”

“Excuse me. I hate to interrupt this story, but may Reddington and I have a moment alone? There’s something we need to talk about.” Liz smiled sweetly at him, hands flat on the table. When pure bluntness didn’t work, she wasn’t above acting innocent and sweet to get what she wanted.

“Oh—” he glanced between them. “ _Oh_! Yeah, sorry. I just got all wrapped up in reminiscing. I’ll just head in the back.” He spun his thumb and jabbed it over his shoulder.

“Enjoy the rest of your meal,” he said with a salute, then walked off.

Liz slouched in her seat. “ _Finally_ ,” she all but hissed.

“Frazier is just enthusiastic. Besides, surely you can forgive his interruptions once you’ve tasted one of his pastries,” Red said, placing his napkin next to his plate.

She waved the suggestion off. “I’m only in for a light lunch today. Anyway, you were going to tell me something before your secret best friend started circling every five minutes.”

“While you were eavesdropping on Decker—”

“It wasn’t—” but she stopped herself. She supposed she had been eavesdropping on him. She’d even been hiding behind the door to do it.

But Red continued as if he hadn’t heard her half-completed protest. “There was a report I found among the ones you hadn’t gotten to yet. It appears that, a year after Beck’s disappearance, the Portland police discovered several charges to a bank account of his. The charges came from several locations throughout Seattle, Washington.”

Liz put her fork down. Charges to the bank card of someone that had gone missing? “Well, obviously that lead didn’t go anywhere. If it had, we wouldn’t even be doing this case.”

“Well, it just so happens that Madden Kellie was in Seattle at the same time those charges occurred. A few months later, charges to Beck’s card occurred again, this time in Pheonix, Arizona. There is one more thing, would you like to guess?” He smiled at her from across the table.

She tapped her chin, pretending to be in deep thought. “Was Kellie there during the time the charges happened?”

“What a positively _astute_ observation, Detective Keen,” he said, making a mock surprised expression.

“So Beck could’ve given Kellie the account’s card to charge purchases to in case anyone started trying to track him down in earnest. That’s what Leane suggested to “Janice”.” Still, the connection was somewhat tenuous. Just because Kellie happened to be in the same cities that the mysterious charges happened in, it didn’t necessarily mean it was him. Pheonix and Seattle were large, major cities with thousands of residents, to say nothing of the people that visited those cities every day.

“Judging by crease in your forehead and your uncertain expression, may I guess that you’re suddenly doubting your own conclusion?” He took a sip from his water. She had no doubt that it disappointed him he was on work hours and couldn’t have something alcoholic.

“Pheonix and Seattle are huge. What if it was just a coincidence that Kellie happened to be there?” She pushed her plate away from herself.

“Hm,” he said between another drink of water. “Do you think it’s _just_ coincidence that the charges stopped after Kellie left those cities? Humor me for a moment—do you think this behavior seems in character for Kellie?” He propped his elbows up on the table and looked at her across from his laced fingers.

He was right. Instead of speculating about coincidence, she needed to analyze the evidence they had and see if it fit Kellie’s known behavior at all. She shifted. “Well, we know he was very good friends with Beck, and at their own inconvenience, they would make long trips to visit each other. It’s also possible that Kellie talked to Beck the day he went missing. Kellie also has a very strong sense of morality and loyalty, so it doesn’t seem out of character to do something like this if Beck wanted him to.”

Red ran a thumb over the back of his palm, smiling at her like a satisfied cat. “Exactly.”

Liz flinched as her phone started vibrating in her pocket. She glanced away from Red and mumbled, “Sorry, let me just see if this is important.”

She pulled her phone out, the name “ _Maggie Schneider_ ” lighting up the screen. Her pulse quickened beneath her jaw. “It’s Beck’s widow. She doesn’t know about _any_ of this, so I should _really_ take this call.”

He held up a hand. “Go ahead.”

Liz rose from her seat with an apologetic grimace, heading for the exit to answer the phone.

* * *

Liz paced in the small room set aside for meetings such as this. When Maggie called, she’d asked if she could meet with Liz at the station that afternoon to discuss updates about the case. Liz’s guts had been twisting the entire time, sick with the knowledge that she was about to give the other woman. She knew what it was to find out that your husband wasn’t the man you thought that he was, to find out that the entire life you had created together meant nothing, that it was like you were a character in a novel that he was writing, and you only became aware of it halfway through the book.

At least she’d never had a child with Tom. Maggie’s daughter was seven. She had had a child with a man she was about to discover that was entirely a stranger to her.

Liz stopped mid-pace when there was a knock on the door, Maggie’s dirty blond hair visible through the window. She walked to the door and pulled it open, calming herself down. This was about Maggie’s grief, not her own distress.

“Please, Mrs. Schneider, take a seat.” She waved a hand at one of the chairs pushed against the back wall.

A smile flitted across Maggie’s face at the common courtesy, and she walked to one of the chairs, sitting in it and settling her purse in her lap. Liz pulled up a chair across from Maggie and straightened her back.

Maggie looked tired. Not just sleep deprived, though she seemed to display signs of that as well, but just the sort of tired that came after a life altering event, wrapping itself around you like a shroud and sinking deep into your bones, spreading through your body like a slow, deadly infection. A tired that diminished your literal and figurative appetite for anything, the kind of tired that made dragging your carcass out of bed in the morning a colossal chore, but you kept doing it because maybe people out on the street relied on you to keep them safe, or maybe because you still had a daughter that needed her mother to care for her.

“Whatever you have to say, I’m ready to hear it.” She shrugged her shoulders, wrapping her hands around the front of her purse.

Liz wasn’t sure she really was ready, but if she was giving her explicit permission to be blunt, then she would do what the woman wanted.

“This investigation has taken some…strange turns, and so we haven’t informed anyone outside of the department about these developments unless we were certain what we had discovered was truthful or had some explanation.” She clasped her hands on one knee, half mirroring Maggie’s posture.

“Detective Keen, I understand why you haven’t told me anything so far. You don’t need to explain that to me,” Maggie said, but the words weren’t harsh, just soft and weary.

“Your husband wasn’t who you thought he was. When we were digging into his life, we found an old, unused office he was using as a ghost address for packages or letters that he didn’t want discovered, as well as to use as an apparent repository for his secrets,” Liz told her, trying to keep from robotically reciting the information like she was reading it off a report. Maggie needed compassion, not coldness.

Some flicker of emotion drifted through Maggie’s eyes. “Was he having an affair?”

“No!” Liz raised her hands. “Nothing like that. We have discovered _nothing_ that indicates your husband was unfaithful. However, at the address, we discovered that Mr. Schneider had changed his name from Shane Locke to Chase Schneider only briefly before he met you.”

She went on to tell Maggie the rest of the story—how Shane was a stolen identity, and how they had uncovered that Chase Schneider was Beck Morley. She didn’t say anything about Kellie or any potential suspects, but she told Maggie everything that she could, because the woman deserved some kind of explanation. It would take years to understand—and she might _never_ fully understand it—, so she deserved anything Liz could tell her that would make the process easier.

By the end of it, Maggie’s face didn’t change. She just sat and stared at Liz, her mouth a straight, expressionless line, her eyes a dull, washed out blue.

“But…why? If he disappeared from his old life because he was running away from someone, why would he ever marry? Why would he put someone else in danger?” Maggie shook her head and swallowed, but there was no sign of tears in her eyes. Perhaps she had spent so many nights sobbing that she was out of tears.

“I can’t say why he would do that,” Liz said, her voice quiet. Because Beck shouldn’t have gotten someone else involved in his mess, much less brought a child into it. She couldn’t defend what he’d done, not to the person he’d hurt the worst.

“But…I was married once. My husband wasn’t who he said he was either, and he hurt me. Whoever Beck was, he wasn’t like my ex-husband. From what I can tell, he cared very deeply about you and Evynne. I don’t know why he made the choices he did, but I don’t think he ever wanted to hurt you.” Liz wished there was something else she could do for Maggie, but what else was there to do besides offer reassuring words? She couldn’t bring back Beck, and she couldn’t change everything he’d done. Anything she said would doubtlessly sound shallow in the face of Maggie’s renewed anguish.

Maggie wrapped her hands around the purse, pulling it up onto her shoulder. “Thank you for telling me all of this, Detective Keen. I wish you the best on the rest of your case.”

Liz followed her lead, standing as she did, and walking at the same pace as Maggie towards the door. “We’ll keep you apprised of any updates that we are at liberty to tell you about,” Liz said, trying to inject some kindness into the bureaucratic words.

Maggie nodded and walked out, shoulders straight, each movement mechanical.

* * *

“Do you own a dress?” Red dropped down in the seat next to her.

She looked up from her laptop, where she’d been compiling a list of employers Beck had worked for. After talking to Maggie, she needed something mundane to concentrate on. She lay her hands down on the keyboard, eyes narrowing.

“… _Why_?” Sometimes he simply brought up irrelevant topics and rambled about them as she typed up one of her reports. It was occasionally distracting, but mostly it was nice to have company rather than sitting at her laptop alone, sinking sun casting gold across the desk. When he wasn’t there, she missed the chatter.

He flipped a piece of paper around, tapping a finger on it. At the top, there was a photograph of an art gallery, large, black and white photos displayed on the wall, a serious looking thirty-something man in a white shirt and a checked tie standing in front of them. Beneath it, a headline read, “ _Photographer Irving Tipton to Host Charity Gala_ ”.

Liz waved a hand in the air. “ _And_?”

“ _And_ ,” he slid the paper over to her, covering her keyboard with the article, “Madden Kellie is going to be at it two nights from now.”

His question was starting to make sense, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to pursue his line of thinking to its logical conclusion. “I don’t think it would look good for the department to pull him out of a charity dinner to question him on flimsy evidence,” she said. That wasn’t what he was suggesting, and they both knew it.

“Perhaps not, but it _would_ be an _incredible_ opportunity to obtain one of his fingerprints to match against the print from the letter found at Beck’s ghost address. And,” he shrugged one shoulder, “not a bad chance for us to meet him in person and see if we can casually get anything out of him.”

He was right. With Kellie living in California most of the time, this was a chance they probably wouldn’t get again. And if they got a fingerprint and it matched the note, they would confirm he knew much more about Beck’s reason for disappearing that he’d let on. There was little logical reason to refuse the idea.

But the idea of _going_ …it conjured up images of her and Red dancing, pressed closed together, his large hand wrapped around hers. Did she really want to put herself in that position? Not that anything would probably happen, but—there was always the chance that it _could_. She didn’t want to make a mistake.

“We could just find out what hotel he’s staying and and try to go through his trash or something. It would be easier than going to all the trouble of getting an invitation to the gala and dressing up.” She didn’t much want to go through trash, but it was a lot less emotionally risky. Sifting through three day old take out and cigarette butts tended to kill any vague fantasies.

“I very much doubt that a judge would give us a warrant to go through his trash based on the evidence we currently have. Is your opposition to my suggestion associated with some kind of unfortunate incident with finger foods?” He raised his eyebrows.

He was right. _Again_. They weren’t going to get permission to go through Kellie’s things, and if they simply pulled him in for questioning tomorrow, they would probably get even less than the Portland police got. It made sense to mix with him in a setting he was comfortable with. That would make it easier to get the fingerprint, and might even make him more likely to accidentally tell her something. The provided wine probably wouldn’t hurt with the latter bit either.

She couldn’t avoid going just because she was frightened of her feelings. She was better than that, wasn’t she? She was a professional. She’d braved worse situations than a few hours of schmoozing up to high society. Maybe it would even be a bit enjoyable. If nothing else, it would be something different than another night on her couch flipping through case files.

She returned the paper to him. “To your first question—I _do_ own a dress.”

* * *

Liz paced, lifting a hand to muss her hair, but dropping it again when she remembered she’d spent forty five minutes getting it to look presentable.

Even though Red had had only had two days to call in a favor from someone or other that owed him, he managed to get both of them tickets to the gala. It hadn’t been hard to convince Cooper of the plan, either. He wanted this case solved as much as they did, and having two officers from homicide attending the gala would look good for the MPD, if nothing else. Good publicity would be their reward if they didn’t get any evidence tonight.

Liz stopped pacing and grabbed sat on the couch, grabbing the remote off the coffee table, switching her TV on and flipping through stations, conversations about cooking chicken flowing into dramatic dialog about cheating spouses. She hadn’t done anything like this for eight months. After the divorce, she’d mostly been isolated and depressed, but she’d gone through a brief period of time where she thought that maybe going on a series of a casual dates would help her heal somehow. She didn’t expect to meet anyone and fall deeply in love. She just wanted a distraction. The most hopeful she’d allowed herself to be was entertaining the idea that maybe one of her dates could become a friend.

The dress she was currently wearing was a remnant of that unfortunate period.

However, she hadn’t allowed herself to think of tonight as a “date”. Those attending the gala could assume what they wanted, but this excursion was simply about two detectives gathering evidence, and they were just going to do it in a dress and a tux instead of normal clothing. Red, however, had seemed more keen on thinking of it at a date. He’d asked her about what the color of her dress would be so that he could have a matching tie. She’d just rolled her eyes and told him that this wasn’t senior prom, and the event was black tie anyway.

That was just what he did—flirted and made jokes. It didn’t mean anything.

But despite her decision that tonight was strictly professional, she couldn’t seem to keep herself still. Even sitting on the couch, she crossed and uncrossed her legs, laced and unlaced her fingers, and ignored the desire to bite her lip. She didn’t want to smear her red lipstick across her teeth. If she did, it would probably look like blood. But then, that would probably suit her more than playing at being a refined woman that often went to things like charity dinners.

She was meant to pound the streets, not circulate art galleries, laughing over terrible jokes, clutching a delicate flute of white wine.

She dropped the remote and stabbed her thumbnail into the “off” button as there was a heavy knock at her door. She stood, smoothing out any wrinkles that had made themselves a home in her dress.

As she walked to the door, Liz glanced behind herself for any sweat pants or shoes left on the floor. There weren’t any, but there was a laundry basket peeking out from behind her couch. She didn’t have time to worry about it. She unlocked the door and pulled it open.

“Good evening, Lizzie,” he said, eyes on her face, then flicking down to take in the full measure of her appearance. She didn’t miss the fact that he swallowed. “You look… _very_ nice,” he said, and she wondered if she imagined the hitch at the end of the sentence.

“Thanks. Um, you do too. Look nice, that is,” she said, her laugh breathy.

To her, he looked more than nice. She’d found men in tuxes and suits attractive before, but she’d never had a preference for dressed up men. But Red in a tux gave him the same kind of handsome, alluring quality that the leading men in old movies had.

His pocket square even matched her dress. _Blue_.

“Well, let’s get this over with,” she sighed, rolling her eyes, even though she didn’t feel annoyance.

She didn’t know what she felt.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for this chapter taking awhile. All my classes suddenly dumped a bunch of homework on me, which reduced my motivation and time to work on this chapter. Still, I did finish it, which is what counts, especially since I've been planning this chapter for a long time. Enjoy! :)

“It must be such hard work. I’m watching CSI right now, and I suppose it probably isn’t much like that, but it must be exciting!” The woman grinned at her, the long, crystalline earrings swaying back and forth, glittering in the dim lighting.

The lighting was probably supposed to set an artist, ambient atmosphere, but it just irritated Liz. It made it hard to distinguish the features of individuals from a distance, which was a problem when she was trying to find Kellie.

“I suppose there’s some excitement, but most of it involves a lot of research and sifting through websites,” she said, giving a delicate shrug, holding the wine glass a few inches away from her. If she managed not to spill any of it, she would consider that a minor miracle.

“I guess that’s why they don’t show those kinds of things on CSI,” the woman said. Her smile shrank a bit, and her gaze grew distant, interest wandering. Her eyes wandered behind Liz.

She waved her free hand. “Oh! There’s Hartwell! You really _should_ meet him, Detective. His stories are astounding.”

Liz very much doubted that some financial broker’s stories would rival those that her partner rattled off of a daily basis. All of Hartwell’s stories probably involved meetings with foreign business men at restaurants with foods whose names were unpronounceable.

“I would like to, but I should really go find—”

“Your date? Of course. Perhaps we’ll talk later, Detective.” The woman’s lips closed over her too-white smile. Her words were politeness, that was all. She didn’t care either way whether they spoke again that night. She probably didn’t even know Liz’s name.

Liz turned her back to the woman who was walking towards Hartwell, her voice tinkling, as bright as the earrings she wore. Liz stopped next to the wall, in between two paintings, scanning the black and white suits and tuxes for Red. Men’s wear really was impractical sometimes. Even if she couldn’t distinguish the faces of the women in the room from each other, at least their clothing set them apart. After a moment, she spotted a cluster of two men and three women surrounding another man, laughing at something he had said.

She took a sip from her wine, fortifying herself for another round of small talk. She walked across the room, approaching the circle. There weren’t any gaps in for her to squeeze through, but she knew when Red saw her from the way his eyes brightened and his smile grew.

“Ah, Elizabeth. Good of you to join us. You came in the middle of the story about the time I had to chase down a truck with a crate of chickens in the back. Have I told you that one?”

As he asked, the people surrounding him flicked their eyes to her. She looked them each in the eye, hand firmly wrapped around the stem of her wine glass.

“I don’t think you did. But you’ll have to tell me sometime.” She looked away from the others, locking her eyes with his, narrowing them a bit. She wanted to be blunt and tell him they needed to talk, but this wasn’t just about evidence gathering. She had to put on a good show in the name of the MPD.

It was only a second, but Red nodded at her, reading her impatience on her face. Despite her desire to be on her best, most professional behavior, the idea that they were in on a secret mission that no one else was aware of sent a thrill through her.

“I’m afraid that Detective Keen and I are needed somewhere else at the moment. Please excuse me.” Before walking away, he finished off his own glass of wine and handed it off to a server that walked by.

The group shuffled out of the way, one or two of them shooting a disappointed—or perhaps longing—glance over their shoulders towards Red. He walked over to her, linking his arm with hers, looking down at her with a smile. It wasn’t like the one he’d worn around the people he’d been talking to. That smile had been a show for their benefit, just as her subdued, polite attitude was for the benefit of anyone she talked to. The only person either of them could act naturally around was each other. His touch was the only thing that felt real about all the night.

“So have you found Kellie yet, or has anyone mentioned him?” As they walked away, she lowered her voice, passing her wine glass off to a server.

“A lawyer I ran into seemed to be acquainted with him, but hadn’t seen him yet. That seems to be the only sign of Kellie thus far.” He lead them a distance away from the milling people and their glittering jewelry and shined shoes. They stopped in front of one of the photographs that Irving Tipton was auctioning off.

Red tilted his head to the side, pressing his lips together as his eyes tracked over the photograph. It portrayed a Nepalese goat farmer, face dusty, hands clasped behind her back. Her skin was wrinkled from days out in the sun, but there was a hint of a smile at the edge of her lips, and the sun glinted off one eye, making Liz feel as if the woman knew something she didn’t.

“What do you think of it?” Red nodded at the photograph.

“I don’t know much about photography, so I can’t really critique the merits of it or anything, but Tipton seems to be good at capturing the personality of his subjects,” she said. It was the kind of semi-informed sounding answer she’d have written on a test when she wasn’t sure what the correct answer was.

“Have you seen the one he did of the boat captain? I believe that one is my favorite,” he said, exhaling softly, something between a laugh and a wistful sigh.

“I haven’t seen that one yet, but I don’t doubt it’s good.” But she wasn’t so much interested in the photograph as she was in Red’s reaction to it. She studied his profile, and the distant, nostalgic look in his eyes. “Why do you like it so much?”

“You can see the experience and the travel on his face.” Red raised his hand in the air, waving it over his own face. “I suppose I see what I might have been in that photograph. Or, something close to it, I suppose.”

His voice held a note of longing in it, and she needed to know more. Of course he’d told her stories of his past experiences as a uniformed officer and later as a detective, but those didn’t always give her insight into his wants and desires, and she found herself wanting him to reveal more.

“What do you mean? Did you want to be ship’s captain?” She leaned closer to him, putting her free hand against the crook of his elbow that her other arm was linked with.

He lowered his chin as he looked over at her. “As a child I did, but as I grew older I came very close to joining the navy. But I suppose…” his mouth twitched, and he looked away from her, “a police officer seemed more practical in the end.”

“I think you would’ve made a difference no matter what path you chose,” she said, voice gentle. “But either way…I’m glad I met you, Red. You’re a good partner.” She didn’t know why she said it, why she was being so open with her emotions for once. Maybe it was risky, but she wanted him to know. She wanted him to know that, if nothing else, he’d made some kind of a difference to her.

He tore his gaze away from the goat farmer’s wise eyes and looked down at her again. He raised his free hand, brushing his fingertips over her cheek. Her breath hitched, and her eyes flicked from his eyes to his hand and back again.

“Thank you, Lizzie. I’m glad that I’ve met you too.” His hand lingered against her cheek a moment longer, warm and anchoring, and if she had a bit less restraint, she might’ve closed her eyes and leaned into his palm. He drew his hand away from her.

“I feel that I must apologize for…how I acted when we first met. I shouldn’t have simply assumed that you would be incompetent,” he said, arm loosening from hers.

“No, Red, it’s—”

She paused, mouth open. How he treated her at first hadn’t been fine, but as she thought about her first day on the homicide division, that seemed all so long ago. She hadn’t been assigned this case. She hadn’t tricked an identity broker, and she certainly hadn’t thought she’d be at a gala, linking arms with her partner. What he’d done was in the past. And more than that, he was apologizing for it.

“Thank you, but I don’t want to think about that right now. What we’re doing now is what really matters,” she finished. What she mostly meant was that the case was the most important thing, but that wasn’t just it. It was them in this moment—touching, apologizing, sharing pieces of themselves. Whatever he’d said or whatever she’d done at the beginning weren’t important in comparison to now.

His eyes moved across her face, the intensity of it making her shift from one foot to the other. She still didn’t know how to react when she was the object of his entire focus, but she didn’t look away. She held his gaze, firm and unblinking. They were so close. Close enough her fingers were pressed into the soft fabric of his tux, the warm scent of his cologne in her nostrils, and she didn’t find herself caring how close they were. In fact, she wouldn’t have minded being closer.

But his eyes drifted away from her, looking over her shoulder, zeroing in on something else. Liz let go of his arm and turned, lifting a hand above her eyes. She dropped it when she realized the gesture was ridiculous. There was no sun to shield her gaze from.

“What? Do you see Kellie?” She craned her neck, muscles straining as she tried to catch a glimpse of him. The lighting turned the slowly churning crowd featureless and impressionistic.

“Over there,” he said, raising an arm and pointing across the room.

There was a small, circular area ringed by chairs set apart from the rest of the event where Kellie was dancing with a woman in a gold dress, who was managing to impressively hold onto a wine glass as she swayed with Kellie.

It was the perfect chance to “meet” him by happen stance. She could imagine it now—she and Red would be dancing, and they’d eventually move into Kellie’s general orbit. Maybe she would accidentally bump his shoe, maybe Red’s elbow would poke him. Horribly polite apologies would ensue and they would end up forming a bond that would last for the rest of the evening.

“You know, I think I’m suddenly feeling like dancing,” she said, arms crossed, eyes locked on Kellie and his partner.

“That’s awfully convenient, as I’m feeling the same urge,” Red said, tapping a finger against one arm.

Red circled around her and took her hand, and she let herself be lead toward Kellie and the woman. So far, almost everything about the night _wasn’t_ her. She didn’t shove herself into dresses and go undercover and seamlessly disappear into the facade of a society woman. All her interactions that night were done with a kind of detached feeling of duty on her part.

Except this.

Even though preparing herself to dance with her partner was certainly something she’d never done until now, there was still a rightness about it that settled inside of her. Yes, she was meant to scrounge around in dirty office buildings, looking for evidence of a victim’s identity, and she was meant to trick an identity broker.

All of those were right. All of those were her.

But somehow _this_ was right too, and _this_ was her too.

* * *

Red was grateful for the brighter lighting on the dance floor. Not because it made it easier to see Kellie, but because it made it easier to see her. Not that he hadn’t known before that Lizzie was breathtaking tonight—his stumbling over his words at the door were proof enough of that—but so far he’d only seen her in dim lighting, her features obscured as if there was a thin, gauzy veil between the two of them, and only now it had been lifted. And _oh_ , she was beautiful, like one of those women in a John Waterhouse painting, with her strong cheekbones and upturned nose, cheeks slightly pink.

He hoped that she didn’t feel his elevated pulse as her wrist rested against his.

She leaned closer into him. He didn’t let himself return the gesture, though he sorely longed to. She seemed fond of him, but he wasn’t going to push her boundaries. He’d already taken several risks recently. She hadn’t moved away when he touched her cheek tonight or the time before that, but she simply could’ve been unsure how to react.

Her fingers on his shoulder tightened. “Kellie and his girl are moving further away from us. Should we start moving toward them?” She whispered, lips almost brushing against his ear.

“We can drift in their general direction, but we need to be careful not to seem conspicuous. We let them come close to us first,” he said, keeping his voice low.

Lizzie pulled her head back to look at him, a crease forming between her eyes, mouth tight. She often made that face when she was dubious about something, and it was terribly endearing.

“Patience,” he said, giving her a slow, sly smile. Maybe she didn’t think he knew what patience was. And perhaps, in some areas, he didn’t. He wanted results, and had little sympathy for incompetence. But in arenas of his life? Oh, he knew patience.

“Says the guy that spent the past couple of weeks yelling at the lab.” She snorted, breath tickling his cheek.

He raised his eyebrows. “If I recall correctly, you were just as agitated about their molasses speed and our lack of an identity for Chase.” He clicked his tongue. “Hypocrisy doesn’t suit you, Lizzie.”

“And moralizing doesn’t suit you either.” She tilted her head, nose wrinkling as she failed to suppress a smile. He couldn’t help but grin at her.

“I suppose not. I’d be more than happy to give you advice about the realms of self indulgence and base enjoyments, however. You could stand to have more fun in your life.” He meant it as a humorous, if friendly, piece of advice. He’d she noticed rarely talked about anything outside of work. Of course, most of _his_ stories were work related too. Maybe he should’ve heeded his own chastisement about hypocrisy.

At his comment, her head pulled back an inch, and her smile wavered. “I have fun. Just because what I enjoy isn’t the same as your own pleasures doesn’t mean my life is unfulfilling,” she said, voice stiff.

He didn’t always know what would make her defensive. And that’s what it was—self conscious self defense. He was under no illusions that he didn’t irritate her sometimes, but sometimes her temper came from her own desire to protect herself. He understood that, but sometimes he wished that she would be less willing to take it out on others.

“I wasn’t implying anything of the sort. I was merely expressing friendly concern,” he said, shrugging one shoulder.

She turned her head to the side, appraising whether he was being honest or not. Lizzie—ever the suspicious, cautious one. There was something to be admired in that. It gave her good detective instincts, but sometimes it also worked against her to her own detriment.

“Okay. I guess you’re not completely off the mark. I _could_ stand to get out more sometimes,” she said, ducking her head. She was trying to seem nonchalant, but the tendons in her hand were still tense beneath his fingers. He wanted to rub the tenseness away.

They were treading in dangerous territory, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to go any further at the moment. He didn’t want to cause her mood to become fouler, and didn’t want to push her. She needed to have a clear head for the rest of the night.

Even if they weren’t working a case, the latter excuse was reason enough to back off the topic. He didn’t like seeing her hurt or wary, and he especially disliked being the cause for it.

“Kellie is moving closer. I suggest we both “accidentally” run into the pair,” Red told her, the golden flash of Kellie’s partner’s dress glimmering in his periphery.

She dipped her head near his ear again, and her face disappeared from his sight. “Do you think he might drop something when we do?”

“He doesn’t seem to have anything on him at the moment. But if you want to create a ruckus by making his partner drop her wine glass then—” he bowed his head in deference to her judgment.

“That’s the opposite of what we want to do,” she said. “Kellie is close now. Let’s start heading towards them.”

She was the one that made the final decision, so he let her take the lead, guiding them towards the oblivious politician and his partner that was mouthing something at him. Red had become somewhat proficient in reading lips, and he thought she might’ve been saying something about campaign contributions.

Or it might have been something about champagne distributions. He was a proficient lip reader—not an expert.

Lizzie shuffled sideways, and his hip collided with Kellie’s. In the recent past, he might have been disappointed that it hadn’t been the beautiful woman whose hip he collided with, but now he didn’t find himself much interested in her at all.

For her part, Lizzie’s elbow jabbed the woman’s side. She immediately pulled her hands away from Red and covered her mouth, staring at Kellie and his partner with huge, shining eyes. “Oh my goodness, I’m—I’m so sorry. That was so clumsy of us! I can’t believe I wasn’t paying closer attention.”

“It _is_ a small miracle this _poor_ woman’s wine glass didn’t shatter,” he said, waving a hand at the woman. He pressed his hands together, turning towards Kellie. “You must forgive us. My partner and I aren’t particularly acclimated to these sorts of events.”

Kellie pursed his lips and flicked his fingers. “No harm done. Don’t worry about it Mr—”

“Detective Raymond Reddington. And this,” he spread his hand in Lizzie’s direction, “is Detective Elizabeth Keen.”

“Detectives!” The woman said, about to clasp her hands together, then glanced down and seemed to remember she was holding a glass of wine. “You know, I’ve been hoping there might be someone here from the Metro PD all night. Do you happen to work in Vice?”

“No, we’re Homicide,” Lizzie said, frowning apologetically.

The woman’s shoulders slumped, but rose again after a moment. “Oh, too bad. There’s a wrongful conviction case I’m trying to get overturned, and it involved the Vice department.”

“Annalise Archer works with the Innocence Project,” Kellie said, smiling at Annalise. His smile for her seemed genuine, not like the polished, plastered on smiles politicians gave for the cameras and their constituents.

“Well, Reddington and I are here to represent the MPD here tonight. Perhaps we could go find a table and talk for a bit? I don’t know if we could be of much help, but we wouldn’t mind.” Lizzie glanced at him, her eyes bright. She was getting caught up in the excitement of the case again, which was a good sign for both of them. When she was excited, she was determined to get what she wanted. She didn’t let go until she’d exhausted all options.

“Certainly,” he said. In truth, he had very little interest in listening to Kellie or Annalise—whose name sounded like the protagonist of a romance novel—, but he was incredibly adept at seeming interested in things he didn’t care for.

He inhaled as Lizzie slid her hand down his arm and onto his elbow, tugging him in the direction of one of the tables that circled the small dance floor.

“Go save us a spot. I need to get my clutch from the cloak room,” she whispered, hiding her face so neither Kellie nor Anelise could see it. Her caution was serving her well.

He raised his eyes to hers, keeping his expression neutral. “Mm, very well. Are you planning something?”

She patted him on the arm. “You’ll see.”

* * *

“Yeah, I’m sorry I can’t be of more help, but Reddington does know someone in Vice,” she pointed her fork at him. “Wesley Underhill, right?”

“Hm?” He glanced up from the canape he was sampling. It was a bit _too_ salty, but not bad.

“Yes! Underhill. Though, wouldn’t that little man from the DNA lab better? If you’re trying to prove someone’s innocence with forensics, that is. Oh, what’s his name?” He closed his eyes and snapped his fingers. “Something with a V. Vyner? Vinny? No, it’s not that. His name doesn’t sound like a mafiso.”

“Veitch,” Lizzie supplied.

“That was it!” He pointed at her. “Thank you, my dear. Helpful as ever.”

Annalise turned her attention to Lizzie, fingers pressed onto the tablecloth. “Do you know him well?”

“No, but we’ve been in touch with him on this case we’ve been working on,” Lizzie said, shifting in her seat. That was one of her tells when she began feeling discomfited. He knew he should probably point it out to her soon.

Kellie lowered his glass of wine, dabbing his lips with a napkin. “Do you mind if I ask what it is?”

Lizzie went still, her jaw tightening. There wasn’t much time for her to decide how much to tell Kellie. Dropping a hint about the case could help them gauge if he knew anything, but too much could shut him up. Her eyes tightened with indecision. Red glanced at her from the corner of his eye and nodded.

“It’s this John Doe case. We thought he was just some normal guy, but it turned out he was using a stolen identity,” she said, her eyes back on Kellie.

He was silent for a second, face and body still. It was only a second, but it was a second too long. He was schooling himself to avoid reacting. Red saw it, and he knew Lizzie would’ve noticed it too.

Kellie flashed her a bright smile, and this time it _was_ the kind meant to charm cameras and constituents. “I see. Have you discovered his identity yet?”

“We’re still working on it,” she said, shoulders drooping, her lips pressed to the side.

“It’s a rather frustrating case.” Red heaved a sigh. His act wasn’t much of an act. The memory of their recent frustrations on the Beck case were all too fresh.

“I wish you could tell us more,” Annalise said. “I love those unsolved mysteries shows!”

“Well, it wouldn’t exactly be unsolved if we were at liberty to disclose more information,” Red pointed out. He took another bite from the canape. “You know, I’m fairly certain this are over salted on _purpose_ to get us to drink more.”

“Not that you need an excuse for that,” Lizzie said, waving her fork at him.

“Guilty as charged.” He reached for the wine glass sitting next to her, but she tugged it away, her eyes narrowed.

“You know, you two have really good synergy,” Annalise said, pointing between the two of them. Red had forgotten how much he disliked the word “synergy”. It reminded him too much of stodgy meetings and forced team building activities.

“That must really help at work,” Kellie said, his voice and posture more relaxed.

“It does. Oh—Annalise! Before I forget, I have Veitch’s number if you want to call him.” Lizzie reached into her lap and lifted her clutch onto the table.

“Oh, sorry!” Annalise pressed a hand to her forehead. “I almost forgot about that. I would love to have his number.”

“Let me just…” Lizzie trailed off and she dug through her clutch, lifting it up into the light, squinting down into the depths of it. “You wouldn’t believe how much crap I have in here.”

She tilted her clutch as if she was trying to show Annalise how much was in it, but her makeup compact tumbled out and fell beneath the table right at Kellie’s feet. It was then that Red knew what she was doing. He pressed his lips together, looking away from them.

Clever, _clever_ Lizzie.

“I’ll get that for you.” Kellie briefly disappeared beneath the table, only his left side and shoulder visible as he searched for the compact, and doubtlessly getting his fingerprints all over it. All they needed was one workable one.

When he rose, he slipped the compact back into her clutch. “There you go.” He smiled, ever the gentlemen, and ever the fool that didn’t know he’d been played.

“Thank you _very_ much,” Lizzie said, and there was an almost mischievous edge to the way she said it, and heaven help him, Red loved it.

She rifled through her clutch another moment, and he saw she was avoiding touching the glitter of the compact. It wouldn’t do to be wearing blue gloves to a gala, so he supposed she had to do what she could to avoid contaminating their potential evidence. She pulled out a pencil and small notebook, flipped it open and scribbled down a number. She ripped off the page and leaned forward where Annalise sat across from her, the paper in her hand.

“There you go. You can call him at any time, except before 10:00 AM.” Lizzie grimaced. “I’m afraid he’s pretty cranky before then.”

Annalise took the paper from her hand with one fluid movement. It was like the woman was made of liquid. Red thought trying to prove people’s innocence was a noble crusade, but it was a shame she hadn’t gone into dancing with the grace that she displayed.

“Thank you, Detective Keen. You’re wonderful,” she said.

Yes, thought Red, yes she was.

Kellie turned to Annalise, putting a hand on her forearm. “I don’t mean to disrupt you, but I’m afraid there’s some other people I promised I’d talk to tonight.”

“That’s perfectly fine. I made the same promise too,” she said, eyes dipping down toward Kellie’s mouth, then back up again. She glanced back at Lizzie. “Thank you again for Veitch’s number. Maybe I’ll see you another time.”

“Maybe,” Lizzie said, nodding politely.

At that, Annalise and Kellie rose, Annalise leaning to whisper something to him before they parted. When they were out of earshot, Lizzie’s posture immediately changed. It went from polite, yet distant with her lowered shoulders and back pressed against her chair, to ecstatic vibrancy, one leg bouncing, her shoulders lifted beneath her ears, blue eyes sparkling like the ocean. Red would have liked very much to kiss her just then.

“We got it!” She held up the closed clutch. “Well, I guess we might not have, but his hand was all over the compact, so our chances of getting a matching print off one of his fingerprints is better than not.”

“ _You_ got it,” he corrected her, a smile flickering over his face. Yes, they’d worked as a team, but the trick with the compact had been all her.

She looked down, trying to suppress a wide smile. “Yeah, I did.”

She glanced back up at him, shoulders lowering, her index finger rubbing over the latch of the clutch. “Red?” her voice was small.

“Yes?” He leaned towards her.

“I know we should mingle a little bit more to keep up appearances, and then leave, but…um,” she looked back at the dance floor behind them, where a few pairs still danced. “Do you mind dancing with me one more time? It’s just that—I don’t get to do it often. So I’d like to get in as much as I can tonight.”

“Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice sounding as firm as possible. “Of course. I would be happy to.”

Her mouth twitched, and as she stood she offered her hand to him. Slowly, as if it was a dream—because how could this be anything less than a dream, this couldn’t be real—, he slipped his hand into hers. Then, she entwined her fingers with his. His heart thudded, and he thought he could believe in that moment--as he occasionally, foolishly did--that perhaps she felt the same way for him as he did for her.

She walked along the edge of the dance floor, fingers still tangled in his, and lead them to the dimmest, most secluded corner.

He didn’t know what song was playing. It was something gentle and quiet, but the lyrics disappeared beneath the quiet murmur of the people surrounding them. Perhaps he should’ve been annoyed by the inaudible song, because if he’d known what it was, he could’ve stored its lyrics for later, and whenever he heard it playing, he would’ve thought of this moment. He would’ve thought of her. An idiotic, sentimental notion, perhaps. But then, he knew that he was an idiotic, sentimental man.

But in the end, the song wasn’t what mattered. What mattered was the shape of this moment—her chest gently rising and falling against him as she leaned into him. Her body going tense and hesitating for a moment under his arms before she lowered her head and leaned her forehead against his shoulder. His arms loose around her as they only vaguely moved to the beat of the music.

“You were fantastic tonight, Lizze,” he said. Maybe she knew that already, but she deserved it to be reaffirmed. She was as clever as she was lovely.

Her laugh vibrated through him. “The thing with the compact? That was nothing.”

“Sometimes the simplest things are the best,” he said. Like this moment, he didn’t say.

“Yeah, you’re probably right.” She shifted so her cheek was pressed against his shoulder.

And despite himself, he turned his head and pressed a kiss to her temple, and she didn’t pull away. She didn’t stiffen. Her eyes drifted closed for a moment and she exhaled.

“We need to go mingle soon, but we’re gonna stay here for another minute,” she said, eyes still shut.

He laughed softly, and his eyes closed too. “I think that sounds perfect.”


	21. Chapter 21

The air bit into Liz’s face, tank top clinging to the small of her back, stuck down by sweat, bangs bouncing in her eyes as her feet hit the pavement along the park’s jogging path. She tossed her head, trying to keep her hair out of her vision. Gray blobs of trees and bushes streaked by as she ran, tips of the foliage turning pink and red with the dawn light.

It had been two days since she and Red sent off the compact's prints to be compared to those off the _M_ letter. Yesterday, the lab said they would have the results sometime by today. Liz hoped so. She didn’t want to spend another several weeks playing an agonized waiting game.

She stopped for a moment next to a tree, pressing her palm into it, breathing slowly, lips parted. She didn’t think she was out of shape, but the new routine of jogging before work was something she’d have to adjust too. The jogging had started two days ago, too. Maybe it had been something about Red’s comment at the gala about not having enough fun that made her head to the store after work and buy jogging leggings and a new tank top. Even if his comment had irritated her at the time, he was probably right that she needed something new in her life. Jogging probably wasn’t what he’d been thinking of when they were talking, but it was a start. At least she found it helped her blow off steam before going into the MPD.

She straightened and pulled her hand off the tree, readying herself to begin jogging again. The jogging wasn’t the only think he’d or done that night at the gala that was making her think. There was…everything else. The way he’d looked at her, they way he’d held her during that last dance and kissed her temple. Thinking back on it now, those moments almost didn’t seem real. They seemed like something that might have happened in a dream, and when she awoke, she was left disappointed that it hadn’t been real.

Except it had been.

She wasn’t imagining things, was she? She was a detective. She’d studying psychology. She knew what people did when they were attracted to another person. But even if he had been interested in her that night, that didn’t count for much. Red loved women, and she knew that the environment that night—dancing, alcohol, her in a dress—would have been conducive to him looking at her in a less than professional light. Really, how he'd acted probably meant nothing. 

Her footfalls pounded harder against the ground, jarring her teeth together. She clenched her hands. But if even Red’s actions at the gala meant nothing, she was going to have to come to terms with the fact that her feelings for him weren’t exactly… _platonic_. When they started veering in a less platonic direction, she didn’t know. There wasn’t always a way to pin point those sorts of things. Sometimes there was a specific moment with some people—maybe they smiled a certain way and it made your heart flutter. But with other people, sometimes it sneaked up on you, and one morning you woke up and found you cared for them as more than a friend or colleague.

A bird trilled as she dashed by, a flurry of wing beats bursting out of the bushes and into the blushing dawn sky. She watched the speck of it disappear, shaking her head. Maybe her realization about her feelings towards him was a good thing. Now that she had acknowledged them, she could begin to move past them and be self aware when she started getting caught up in any romantic notions.

The watch on her wrist squealed, and her shoes skidded against the pavement, sending a puff of dirt spraying across the path. Liz tapped the side of the watch and turned the alarm off. She turned on heel, sighing as she gazed back down the winding stretch of the jogging path. It was time to start heading back to her apartment and getting ready for work, to see whether the lab would be able to deliver on the results she promised.

That was all that mattered. That’s all she wanted to see.

Nothing else, of course.

* * *

“I can’t stand the suspense of it,” he said, turning the envelope over in his hands, holding it in the air like a bomb that might explode. “Before you open a piece of evidence, it’s a bit like Schroedinger’s cat, isn’t it? The evidence is both right and wrong.”

He paused with the envelope pinched between two fingers, looking off at a distant point in the air. Liz wanted to grab it from him and just read the information without letting him ramble, but she knew if she tried to take it, he’d just tease her and jerk it out of her way.

“I’m sure the whole Schroedinger’s cat theory is more complicated than that. Well, goes to show that metaphors that don’t involve potential cat murder are probably better. Now then,” he extended the envelope to her, “would you like to do the honors, or shall I?”

Liz pulled the envelope out of his grip and stuck a pen into the seal of the envelope, ripping it open.

“Do you open all your letters with such savagery, Lizzie?” He crossed his legs and watched her reach into the envelope.

“Just my bills,” she said. But it wasn’t as if she frequently got mail that didn’t fit into one of three categories: bills, junk mail, and catalogs.

She scanned over the information contained in the papers. Some of it was technical jargon that made little sense, but once she got to the conclusion, a smile slid over her face. _We can say with certainty that the fingerprints belong to the same two individuals._ She tossed the papers over to Red’s side of the desk, where they fluttered to land on the keyboard of his computer.

“Kellie is _M_. No wonder he looked nervous when we told him we were working a Doe murder involving identity theft.” His reaction hadn’t been obvious, just a sudden stillness in his body, the tensing of muscles, eyes widening just a centimeter. Without the evidence, she might’ve just chalked up Kellie’s reaction to a weak stomach for any mention of murder, but now there was little doubt he knew something more about Beck’s disappearance than he let on in his interview with the Portland police.

Red removed his glasses from the inner pocket of his jacket and slipped them on for a moment, eyes jumping across the tiny print of the lab’s report. “I suppose they’re trying to save money on paper, but I don’t think it’d hurt them to print it a bit larger,” he said under his breath, turning it over to the last page.

When he was done, he placed the lab results near his keyboard, smoothing one finger over a crease. “I think Kellie is do for a visit from us.”

“I don’t think the department would approve a trip to California,” she said. That was the one problem with Kellie living all the way across the country. They could conduct a phone interview with him if he agreed to it, but a phone call wouldn’t give her them same kind of information that seeing him face to face would. She’d miss little facial tics and shifts in posture that could be crucial to adjusting questioning tactics.

“Probably not. However, if we ever do go there, there’s this little town I visited once that I’m certain you’d love, especially for its Chinese takeout. But we’ll have to postpone a reverie in the state of Hollywood and oranges, as Kellie is still in DC,” he said, one finger tapping against his thigh.

“You’ve been keeping tabs on him?” Liz supposed she should’ve been doing the same thing. At the very least, she should’ve been searching the Internet to see what part of the U.S. he was in. But she'd been...distracted.

“I’m terribly disappointed that you think I wouldn’t be.” He started reaching for the desk phone. “But how about we schedule that visit to Kellie’s hotel?”

He lifted the phone up off the cradle and started dialing, face neutral and placid. He pressed the receiver to his ear, hand laid flat against the desk as he waited for someone to pick up.

“Yes, hello!” he said to the person on the other end, breaking into a smile. He threw himself into a facade physically even when the other person couldn’t see him that Liz wondered whether he would’ve made a good actor.

“My name is Raymond Reddington with the Metropolitan Police Department. I met with one of your guests, Madden Kellie, two nights ago. We talked a bit about a potential wrongful conviction case. Would he happen to be in so we could further discuss it?” He scooted the lab results over to the corner of the desk and pulled a notebook and pen closer to himself, pressing the end of the pen against the page as he waited for the receptionist to look up the information.

“Excellent! Please convey to him that he will be there as soon as possible. Thank you ever so much for your help.” He jotted down a room number on the page, tearing it off before hanging up.

She crossed her arms. “Is this conversation with him gonna get nasty?”

She remembered the way he’d vaguely threatened Logan Shaw. At the time, it had bothered her, but now? She wasn’t sure. It had been effective. It had gotten them what they needed. She wasn’t about to hurt anyone for information, but perhaps sometimes unorthodox methods were necessary, and Red _excelled_ at unorthodox.

Red kept his eyes on the notebook page, mouth tight. “That entirely depends on what Mr. Kellie decides.”

* * *

“What a _lovely_ hotel room they’ve provided you with!” Red circled the room, walking up to the back wall where a painting hung. It was a long, black squiggle drawn across a white background. “Although, I’m not sure what the hell this is about. Honestly, is it some kind of requirement for upscale hotel rooms to have strange, contemporary art in them?”

He exhaled and shook his head at the painting, raising his eyebrows. “They had the same sort of thing in a hotel room I spent the weekend in back in ‘89. I actually don’t remember much of it—”

He widened his eyes and grimaced, glancing over at Liz, emphasizing the reason he couldn't remember was likely unspeakable in the presence of law enforcers and politicians. “But I do remember this strange painting that looked like the white outline of a bird against a black background.”

Kellie stood near the large windows, the edges of his suit tinted gold in the morning sun. “I don’t know much about art, Detective Reddington. But didn’t you come up here to talk about Annalise’s project?”

“Ah, yes of _course_.” Red pressed a palm to his forehead. He walked over to Kellie and put a hand against his shoulder, giving him a closed mouth smile. “Why don’t we all sit down, then?”

Kellie held his gaze, hands jammed into his pockets. It was the hard, piercing gaze of someone who spent time being challenged on a daily basis shoving back. Liz didn’t know how easy it would be to get Kellie to talk, but Red had ways of getting his hooks under people’s skin until they twisted and gave up.

Liz was the first to sit down at the table adjacent to the windows, and Red sat beside her. Kellie pulled out a chair across from them, slow and deliberate, his green eyes gliding between the two of them.

“You seem a bit edgy. Is something bothering you? Bad breakfast at the buffet?” Red canted his head to the side.

“If the department has a problem with Annalise asking questions, I’ll be happy to smooth things over.” Kellie turned to Liz, his body angled away from Red.

“No, no, that’s not a problem at all.” She waved a hand at him. “We just have a few questions for you.”

Usually during questioning she would take a softer approach in contrast to Red’s dry, sharp approach. It dragged the person into her corner, but she didn’t know if that would work on Kellie. He was talking to her instead of Red, but he was still on high alert while talking to her—shoulders tight, eyes narrowed.

“It may have slipped your mind, but I told you we’re working a Doe case,” she said, placing her hands against the table.

Kellie laughed, light and airy. “I’m not sure how I could be of any help with that unless it involves a wrongful conviction. If it does, I’d be happy to bring the information to Annalise.”

“Oh, Kellie,” Red sighed, loud and sharp. “I thought you were one of the decent ones.”

“If this is all, I have some things I need to be doing. I don’t really have anything else to say to you.” Kellie started to shift, twisting away from them, getting ready to stand.

“We know you wanted to help Beck when he was alive. The least you could do for him in death is to try to bring his killer to justice,” Liz said, and as she did, Kellie paused mid-stand, the line of his mouth easing into a smile that looked painful

“I don’t know what—”

Red pulled out two pieces of paper and set them in front of Kellie. One paper was the _M_ letter inside a plastic bag, slightly wrinkled from the lab’s handling of it, graphite smudged. The other was the lab report from that morning.

“Care to continue lying?” He pursed his lips and glanced down at the papers, spreading one arm over the back of his chair. “It does so befit your ilk, but in this case I would advise against it.”

Kellie raised one wrist and turned it over, his watch glittering. “I don’t see any handcuffs on me, so I don’t have to answer any more of your questions. Now, detectives, please leave.”

Liz started to rise, but Red sat his hand against her wrist underneath the table, eyes narrowed. She wanted to tell him what she was thinking, but she couldn’t do that without giving herself away to Kellie either. Instead, she just covered his hand with hers, nodding and smiling. He kept his hand against her wrist for another moment before pulling it off.

“Sure, okay, we’ll leave.” Liz raised her hands in mock surrender. “It’s just that we want to talk because we’re concerned about your career too. If you talk to us, we can negotiate anonymity or immunity. But if you don’t talk…anything that might get out about you is out of our hands.”

Kellie’s nose wrinkled, and he took a step closer to her. He pressed an index finger against his chest, his other hand on his hip. “Are you threatening to blackmail me, Detective?”

“Don’t worry, Detective Keen is _far_ too principled to do a thing like that.” Red slid his arm off the chair and got out of it in one slow, languid movement.

“You see, we’ve been having some issues with the security at our department. Internet savvy types digging around, getting into evidence they shouldn’t…” Red walked over to Kellie, dragging his eyes up to meet the man’s smoldering, indignant glare.“Who knows what sorts of evidence might get leaked?”

“If you come to the department now to talk to us, we’ll do our very best to see that your involvement in this is kept a secret,” Liz said.

Kellie’s head jerked to look at her, chest expanding beneath his white shirt with heavy breaths, lips pressed together. “Fine. Just let me get my bag.”

Red leaned back, and Kellie dropped his eyes, like a dog that had lost a test of dominance.

 “Of course. Just don’t try to sneak out a window. Of course,” Red leaned his weight on one leg, craning his neck to look out the windows across from them, “if you did, it’d be much more of a permanent exit than you’d probably like to make.”

Kellie said nothing, just breezed past Red and he made his way to the closet, rustling around for his things.

“Hm.” Red turned on heel and walked towards her, coming even up even closer to her than he had to Kellie. “Detective Keen, are you using slightly unscrupulous methods to illicit information from our politician friend?”

She couldn’t help the flutter of nerves in her stomach as she looked up at him, his eyes warm and soft, a look reserved for her. “I might have. But it’s only because my partner and his bad habits are rubbing off on me.”

“Perhaps there is hope for the opposite effect as well. Perhaps I’ll learn better behavior on your watch,” he said.

At the beginning, maybe she would’ve wanted him to be different. Less rough, less brash less…everything that he was. But if any of those things were taken away, he wouldn’t be one of the best detectives in the homicide division. He wouldn’t be her partner. He wouldn’t be Red.

“You’re a good man as you are,” she said, swallowing as she did.

Red’s mouth parted, one hand reaching towards her until Kellie came out of the closet, bag slung over his shoulder. Red pulled his hand back, rubbing his fingers against each other.

“Well,” Kellie said, swiping a hand through his auburn hair. “Let’s leave.”


	22. Chapter 22

Kellie’s carefully styled and greased hair was starting to look sad under the harsh light of the interrogation room. The room always reminded Liz of an operating theater, and she supposed that was an apt comparison. Instead of slicing open and picking apart someone’s guts, this room was meant for prying into and rooting out the truth.

Thus far, Kellie hadn’t given much in the way of information despite their promise to keep his involvement secret as long as he cooperated. He’d mostly rambled about how he hadn’t talked before because he had to think of those that depended on him, and once Liz had gone to the vending machine to get him a drink.

Now, he was popping the tab on the Coke and sipping at it, hands held loosely over the can. Red was starting to seem agitated at Kellie’s buttoned up lips.

“Do you want us to leave so that you may consume your drink in peace? Really, we have _nothing_ better to do than watch you drink your beverage. Please, take your time. We don’t have a case to work on.” Red extended his legs and started to push away from the table.

Kellie put the Coke down on the metal surface, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “You don’t get it. You can promise that this will be secret, but how can you know? You said yourself that your department has been having trouble keeping a grip on information.”

Kellie was right. Red earlier alluding to Leane poking around in their database had been a calculated risk to threaten Kellie, and now that tactic could be backfiring on them.

“Is it your reputation or yourself that you’re concerned about?” Liz glanced over at the can and waved a hand at it. “You can keep drinking if you want.”

Kellie crossed his arms, a hard mask over his face, a lank piece of hair falling against his forehead. “Both. Beck Morley was murdered for a reason. I have a family, Detective. I’m certainly concerned for myself, but moreso for them.”

Red shifted in his chair, teeth running against the inside of his cheek. Liz flicked her gaze to him. As effective as his sharp methods could be, she wanted to try to keep Kellie going. He didn’t like either of them—not after what they’d said to him in the hotel room—but at least every third sentence out of her mouth wasn’t something sarcastic. Kellie grabbed at the Coke, finger running against the rim.

“Just give me a chance to keep going,” she said, leaning over to Red, mouth close to his ear.

He didn’t turn to face her, just looked at her out of the corner of his eye, body still facing Kellie. “Do you remember what I said when I understood Kellie’s loyalty to Beck?”

Liz pulled her head back an inch, lowering her chin. Red was capable of making witnesses or those they encountered in the course of a case feel sympathized with, but she hadn’t seen him able to turn the opinion of someone that already thought he was one of the smuggest men they’d ever had the misfortune of meeting.

“Sure, but—”

“Lizzie,” he said, and her name was soft in his mouth. “If you trust me in any way, professionally or otherwise, you will let me do this.”

If she had been feeling argumentative, she would’ve accused him of playing the guilt card. Red knew how to twist someone’s emotions to get what he wanted. But now wasn’t the time to become accusatory or stubborn. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, thumbnail scraping her scarred wrist she held in her lap. For her, trust wasn’t something easily given. She held it against her chest in a clenched fist, sharp and heavy, and if someone asked it of her, she only clutched onto it tighter. The last time she trusted someone— _really_ trusted them—she’d gotten bruises and who knows how many psychological scars. But this was different. Red was different. As a partner, she trusted him. As a person…she trusted him too.

She pressed the pad of her thumb down flat on the raised, jagged flesh of her wrist. “Okay,” she said, the words little more than a rasped whisper. “I’ll trust you.”

When Liz turned back toward Kellie, he was still looking at the can as if it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen, like he was holding a rare gem between his hands instead of a metal can full of a sugary, carbonated drink.

“Mr. Kellie, I read in your file that you would make frequent trips to visit whatever city Mr. Morley had chosen to stay in. Not out of a desire to be interviewed by him, but out of friendship.” Red opened a folder, flicking to one of the articles they’d used to research Kellie.

Kellie’s index finger paused against the can and he looked back up. His mouth went tight for a moment, then went back to a neutral line. Still, the tension had been there. His friend’s death hadn’t left him unaffected.

“That’s true. Beck and I were good friends, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to risk my family for him. He’s dead, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” He flexed his hand against the can and pushed it away from himself.

Red said nothing for a moment. He glanced down, hands cradling the folder, his body going rigid like something heavy was trying to crawl onto him and he was straining to keep it off. His lip twitched. Her hand started jerking towards him, but she pulled it back before touching his side beneath the table. Whatever he was thinking, whatever he was planning, she knew he wanted to do it on his own, but that didn’t stop something inside her twisting at seeing how distressed he seemed to be becoming.

“Years and years ago there was a man on whom something similar befell what you are fearing,” Red said, voice tight and controlled. “He was a law man. He was good at what he did. Very, _very_ good, in fact. He had a family, too. He was arrogant then, perhaps thinking that he was _unbelievably_ lucky to have both a fulfilling career and a family.”

He exhaled, a derisive, sharp snort. “But he was young and senseless, an imbecile that thought that all was well in paradise when the opposite was true. It wasn’t that he didn’t regret the dance recitals that he missed, and it wasn’t that he didn’t apologize for the dinners her forgot about, but he believed that somehow the good he was doing for the city made up for those sacrifices.”

“ _But_ …” he swallowed hard, like there was something sharp wedged in his throat that he couldn’t dislodge. “One night a man escaped prison. A criminal whom the law man had arrested. When the law man was responding to a new crime scene, the criminal went to the house of the law man with the intentions of destroying the law man’s life as utterly as his had been while imprisoned.”

It was only then that he broke eye contact with Kellie. His eyelids fluttered, glancing down at the file, the tips of his fingers turning white as he pressed them against the table, color only returning to them when he seemed to have adequately steadied himself. Liz’s chest was tight, the air in the room pressurized. From the moment he’d started speaking, she knew that the story he was telling was a personal one.

“When the law man came home, the criminal was no longer there, but the evidence of what he’d done was. An injured wife and daughter, blood on the carpet, speckling the walls. Wreckage of a perfect life that hadn’t existed in the first place, all the fault of the law man’s blindness and arrogance.” Red’s voice was harsh, full of spite and loathing for the man he spoke of—for the man he must’ve been then.

“When I promise that we will keep you and your family safe from whatever you fear, you must believe I will do everything in my power to see that my promise is fulfilled. And if it is not, you may blame me entirely for it.” Red shut the folder. Kellie slid his hands off the table. “But if you do not tell us, then I cannot protect you.”

“Well, you tell an affecting story, Detective Reddington,” Kellie said, tone even.

Red’s face remained static, a stillness settling upon him. It the absence of any emotion that chilled her. “As you astutely pointed out a few hours ago, you’re not under arrest, Mr. Kellie. You’re free to leave at any moment. Hell, call your lawyer for all I care. But you walk out that door right now?” He extended his arm towards the exit, his green eyes hard and cutting.

“The minute you step out, you’re a walking target with no protection. If someone was determined enough to silence Beck over whatever you’re so worried about, then I’d say your concerns about what they might do to you aren’t unfounded.” Red reached around the back of his chair and set one hand against it, starting to stand. “Please, let me get the door for you! Do you need another drink? Maybe something stronger than a Coke, though.”

He pulled his jacket off the chair, shaking the material out with a snap. “Maybe a whisky? Are you a whisky man?”

The skin along the side of Kellie’s nose wrinkled. “Fine. You want to know? Sit down and I’ll tell you.”

Red reached across the table and patted Kellie’s shoulder, flashing him a smile. “There, see now? That wasn’t so hard, now was it?”

Kellie didn’t jerk away from Red hand, but his eyes flashed down to it, just barely keeping himself from grimacing.

“I don’t know everything, all right? I don’t know the details of how he disappeared. He only told me what he wanted me to know.” He glanced between the two of them, unfolding his hands like a butterfly. Liz leaned closer to him.

“We don’t need to know the intricacies of his disappearance, just about who might have killed him,” she assured him. She didn’t want him getting slowed down by the fact there were certain things he didn’t know. That wasn’t relevant. The Portland police that originally worked Beck's disappearance could worry about that.

“About six months before Beck disappeared, he told me he was working this story on a businessman named Gatlin Stroud that was rumored to be involved with money laundering for all kinds of low lifes—drug traffickers, mobsters, corrupt officials…anyway, Beck went about his usual process of researching his connections and potential money trails. Everything seemed routine at first,” Kellie said, softly laughing, eyes distant.

“Did he tell you what went wrong?” She understood the temptation to get lost in fond memories, but they needed to keep him in the present.

His eyes shifted back to her, shoulders sagging with his return to the present where his friend was dead. “Sometimes he was lucky enough to record conversations. Somehow he got a couple recordings of Stroud meeting with his unsavory clients. The threats started a little while after the recordings.”

“Considering the sorts of people Mr. Morley made a living exposing, I’d expect he’d get a lot of threats. Why was this any different?” Whatever it had been, it would’ve had to be something dire. Judging by Kellie’s concern about his family, she could’ve guessed what the threats might’ve been, but she needed to hear it straight from Kellie.

“Beck wasn’t married, but he did have a sister. They didn’t get to see each other in person very often, but they talked on the phone and online all the time. Who knows how Stroud’s people found out, but Beck got a manila envelope one day with photographs of his sister and her children in it all over town—at their house, shopping, soccer games.” Kellie pulled back a sleeve on his suit and scratched at his arm, dropping his eyes. “Then there were the untraceable phone calls threatening to do horrible things to her and her children.”

He paused for a moment, and she let him gather himself to continue the story. With the thick silence in the room, she heard that Red’s breathing had changed. Only a little, but it was harder than it had been a few seconds ago before Kellie started talking about the threats. Based on the story he’d told, she could only imagine what raw memories were playing out in front of his mind’s eye.

“Beck felt like he didn’t have any choice but to disappear. Even if he dropped the story, he couldn’t be sure that his sister would be safe. I didn’t see him much after he  told me that, until the morning he disappeared. He gave me some bank cards and told me to use them occasionally to confuse anyone trying to look for him, and I promised I’d give him money if he ever needed it. Then he just—” Kellie snapped his fingers like a magician.

“I hardly heard anything from him after that. I’d occasionally give him money, but the details of that don’t matter. A little while before he was murdered, he told me that someone from his old life was blackmailing him and they wanted a payoff, so I sent him 30,000 dollars. Then…” Kellie waved his hands in the air, working his mouth. “Who knows? You’re just as in the dark about who killed him as I am.”

“I might disagree with that, Mr. Kellie. You seem to know about some of the things Mr. Morley got on Stroud. Were there any contract killers that he hired that Beck knew about?” The hit man theory was one Red had initially suggested, and despite how fantastical the suggestion of it was, a contract killing seemed more and more likely.

“No.” Kellie pulled back his sleeve, though he still rubbed at his arm. “Beck didn’t get anything concrete about things like that, though he suspected Stroud had hired someone to kill for him before. Some people connected to Stroud had died under mysterious circumstances in the past, but Beck wasn’t a conspiracy theorist. He was paranoid, sure, but he wasn’t going to report on anything unless he had proof. But I don’t doubt Stroud probably hired someone to off Beck in the end.” He exhaled, seeming to shrink inside his suit.

The truth of Beck’s disappearance must’ve been weighing on him for eight years, always looking behind him and wondering if someone was going to come after him because of his connection to the missing journalist. Perhaps he both dreaded and look forward to any kind of contact from his old friend. Had it been a kind of morbid relief to Kellie that Beck was dead? She didn’t doubt he was grieved by his friend’s death, but now that Beck was gone, so too was the burden on Kellie.

She glanced over at Red. Staying silent during the bulk of the questioning wasn’t usually his prerogative. Staying silent at all wasn’t his prerogative in general, really. Red talked, and _talked_. Perhaps he thought that letting her take over the second half of the questioning was best, but it didn’t seem that way. This silence didn’t seem calculated. It seemed thick and hard, meant to wall back something.

“Do you think that’s all we need from Mr. Kellie at the moment?” she asked him, settling a hand on his thigh beneath the table.

Red stared forward a second too long before his eyes slid to her. “I believe so.”

He stood, her hand sliding off his leg and falling onto the edge of the chair where he’d been sitting. Liz pulled her hand back into her lap and crossing her arms. Something was off.

“You’re free to go for now, Mr. Kellie, though we’ll be in contact in the future, I suspect. The offer of a whisky is still on if you want it.” He flashed a smile at Kellie, but it was weak.

Kellie leaned back in his chair, looking around the room like he couldn’t believe they were letting him go as easily as that. “No, I’m fine. But uh—thank you.”

He smoothed back his hair, trying to get it to look somewhat presentable. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed in that endeavor and only mussed it further, several more strands of hair falling down onto his forehead. She and Red walked him to the door of the interrogation room, smiling at him as he walked out.

After he left, the thick silence returned between her and Red again. She thought there should’ve been some kind of triumph in the aftermath—shouting and eyes stinging from the overwhelming joy at almost cracking the case. They knew why Beck had disappeared now. They knew who’d given him the money. They knew who was probably behind killing him.

So why didn’t she feel like cracking open a bottle of champagne? All she felt was a heavy exhaustion, the kind that came after a day and running on only two hours of sleep. The kind of tiredness that dug down into her bones and gave her little enough strength to crawl onto her bed and fall into a disoriented sleep plagued by strange, hazy dreams.

“Red…” She turned to him, and when he raised his eyes to her, she saw the same weariness she felt.

“That story you told—”

“ _Don’t,_ ” he bit out, and the sharpness of his tone felt like it cut into her, slicing into the tender center of herself.

The bottom of her mouth tensed. “I know that story was about you, Red. Don’t pretend it wasn’t. You don’t have to tell me about it, but at least—”

She breathed a ragged sigh. “I get it, telling Kellie—a virtual stranger—that story to get him to confess was hard. In fact, probably one of the hardest things you’ve done recently. You don’t want to talk about it, but we’re friends, right? Or at least I think we are. I just—”

His mouthed parted, fingers balled up at his side, fidgeting. He didn’t look mad at her, just uncertain and so very lost.

“I care about you. I just want you to feel like you can talk to me if you need to. That’s all.” She threw her hands up in the air in the surrender and started backing up towards the door. If he wanted space, she would grant him that. She’d said her piece.

But he didn’t. He stepped closer and he reached out a hand, wrapping it around her shoulder, then started clumsily tugging her to him until both of his arms were wrapped around her, his body warm and solid.

She’d expected silence most of all—a cold shoulder, a tense jaw, and then maybe a “thank you” a few hours later after he had time to process her words. But not an embrace. That was the last thing she’d expected. Her arms hung limp at her sides for a moment until she lifted them beneath his arms and wrapped them around his lower back, fingers curling into the slick, gathered fabric of his vest.

“Thank you,” he said, the words rough, like he was still swimming in remembered grief.

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling over his shoulder, even though she knew he couldn’t see it. He couldn't know that this probably meant as much to her as it did to him. She already knew he trusted her, but this was something different. It was vulnerability from a man that rarely showed it, and he trusted her to see him like this.

“C’mon.” She pulled her arms away from him, and he followed her lead, dropping his arms, fingers dragging off her back. Admittedly, she really hadn’t really wanted to let go of him. Hugging Red was something she could get used to—warm and comfortable--although it was also probably something she shouldn't have expected more of.

“We’ve earned a break, right? Paperwork can wait. You’re always taking me somewhere, so let me take you out.” She jerked her head towards the door and started tugging on his arm, giving him a small smile.

“You’re not thinking of taking me to that Chinese place you always get takeout from, are you? Their rice is always somehow dreadfully over cooked.” He frowned, arm going stiff, resisting her tug. He was trying to bring levity back into the conversation, but she saw that his heart wasn’t quite in it. There was still a sad air about him, but he had packed down the worst of it down inside himself. She knew what that was like. She had to do it on a weekly basis when it came to Tom.

“Don’t complain about free food,” she said, grip still on his arm, other hand reaching for the door.

He let out a deep, long suffering sigh, but relaxed his arm and let her pull him along side her as they exited the interrogation room and out the hallway. As they headed toward the exit, that empty feeling she’d had with her hadn’t left, but the weight of it had decreased, just as Red’s sadness had not gone away, but it had started to recede, at least for the moment.

* * *

The proceeding days were a blur of phone calls, paper work, and visits to Cooper’s office. Even though they hadn’t caught the killer, they’d still made huge strides in the case with what Kellie offered up to them. Many of the calls were to the Portland police, and the detective she had talked to made a quiet noise when she told him that, no, his cold case was no longer so cold and unsolved anymore. It had been a headache to tell him that she couldn’t inform him about the source of her information. Even though she said she had promised the source anonymity and immunity, the detective still had needled her, trying to jab at any vulnerabilities he could detect over a phone call.

Liz could understand his frustration. She would be similarly annoyed—actually, probably more than annoyed, she’d likely be _infuriated_ —if one day some detective from another state phoned her up one day to tell her that a case she’d spent hours and weeks on had suddenly been solved, but they couldn’t tell her the source. She had no doubt that when they detective got off the phone, he ranted to his partner and co-workers about it. In his position, she certainly would’ve gone to Red and gave him the litany of reasons she was angry.

As more phone calls were made, and more papers were filed, Cooper started talking about something that set her nerves on fire—a press conference. Just as she understood annoyance of the cold case detective, she understood the need for a press conference. This was a significant missing persons case that had been solved, even if the murder hadn’t been closed yet. Both the MPD and Portland police would give their own respective announcements within days of each other.

Liz wasn’t terrified of public speaking. It was just that she preferred to work behind the scenes on her own without the spotlight pointed at her, scrutinizing her methods and attitudes. When she was dissected under a microscope, she knew there were plenty of things inside her that weren’t pretty. Temperamental, emotional, selfish? Those weren’t the qualities you wanted in a detective representing a major case. 

Perhaps she was overreacting. It was only one press conference, only one announcement, and it wasn’t as if she’d be the only one talking. But she would be one of them. And with high profile, strange cases like this, the detectives on the case were always scrutinized. Why didn’t she do this? Why did she do that? How could she have been so idiotic? Why did they put a rookie on a case like this?

She wanted to think she had a thicker hide than to be affected by such things, but the truth that she wasn’t always immune. Perhaps some of the criticisms would even be justified, but she bristled at the thought of reporters and arm chair investigators potentially complaining about her methods when they knew nothing about the details or the behind the scenes struggles and road blocks during the course of the Schneider/Morley investigation.

But she nevertheless smiled and accepted when Cooper told her that she and Red would talk briefly during the press conference. There was some comfort in knowing her partner would be there beside her, she supposed. He wasn’t easily rattled by much, especially not something as routine as a press conference. And besides that, his presence had become a comfort to her. When something was fraying her nerves or digging under her skin, she knew he was there, willing to listen.

Still, as the press conference closed in, she gradually started getting up earlier and earlier, spending longer and longer on her morning runs to burn any nervous energy out of her body before she went to work. Sometimes it had the effect of making her tired when she pushed her way through the MPD’s doors, but her body was loose, not tightened and wound up by the knowledge of her workload.

The morning of the press conference, she took her run even earlier than usual, focusing only on the moment, on the cool air against her skin, hair whipping against the back of her neck, the jar in her bones when her feet hit the pavement, the scent of newly fallen rain soaking into the grass, sinking into the dirt.

She would be fine, she told herself. She’d done harder things. This was just something new.

And besides, she had Red there for her if anything went wrong. With him there, she didn’t really have much to worry about, did she?

* * *

It probably wasn’t good etiquette to keep losing focus as she stood behind Cooper while he talked at the podium, but the details of the case that he recited to the press had become stamped into her brain. Years from now, if she was required to, Liz was certain that she could repeat details word for word from some of the files.

Even standing there in a stiff, formal uniform she hardly ever wore, somehow she didn’t feel nervous. The uniform was like another skin she’d slid into, just as much a disguise as the blue dress she’d worn at the gala. Like that night, she would be a polished version of herself that the public would find appealing. Except she wouldn’t be giving polite, soft laughter and indulging in small talk. She would be a professional, put together policewoman, firm mouthed and serious.

Still, she went over the basics of what she wanted to say as she tried to keep one ear focused on Cooper to know when he was about to introduce her. She folded her hands in front of herself and glanced over at Red. He was staring straight ahead, a strong, firm set to his jaw, projecting the image of an intimidating senior detective. He was in uniform too, as was required for a press conference, and she couldn’t help but note for the tenth time that he was terribly attractive in it. It probably wasn’t good etiquette either to be ogling her partner, but she was only human. 

She jolted to attention when she heard her name announced and the murmuring in amongst the press start quieting down. As Cooper stepped away from the podium she nodded at him, and walked forward, wrapping her fingers around the sides of it, attempting to exude an air of authority.

“As my superior just told you, during the course of our investigation, we discovered that our victim, Chase Schneider, was in fact Beck Morley, the subject of an infamous missing persons case from Portland, Oregon. We have reason to believe that his death was connected to a story he was investigating during the months leading up to his disappearance.” Cooper had already covered the broader background of the case. All he’d told her to do was give some kind of vague placation to the press that they had a line of inquiry they were investigating.

A woman in the press section stood, raising up a pen to get Liz’s attention. She’d expected plenty of prying into a case as strange as this, but not quite so early. She nodded at the woman.

“Do you have a clear suspect?” the woman asked, pen held above her note pad, ready to begin a flurry of scribbles.

“I was about to get to that,” she said, and kept herself from grimacing. The words had come out too sharp, too blunt. “We believe that this may have been a contract killing. We know who might have hired the hit, but we’re still investigating who might have carried it out. We are not disclosing the names of any suspects at this time.”

At that, there was a flurry of pens slamming down onto papers, caps wiggling in the air as the reporters prepared themselves a barrage of questions. She could only imagine the questions the words “contract killing” had put into their heads. Several more reporters jumped up, pens in the air, vying for her attention. Cooper had advised her to go with her gut, not answering any more questions than she thought was pertinent.

“I’m sorry, I’m not taking anymore questions. If you have anything else to ask, you can direct it toward my partner, Reddington.” She stepped away from the podium, a few shouts directed at her back. Let them dislike her if they wanted. Let them think she was obstructionist. She was just doing her job.

As she started heading to stand behind the podium again, Red walked past her and paused for a second, two fingers brushing against hers, glancing at her over his shoulder with an approving nod.

Before he started talking, a reporter immediately stood with a question, but it just took a single, ferocious glare from Red to get the man to turn his gaze to the ground and sink back into his chair. She was only partially successful in suppressing a grin. She really needed to work on her poker face.

After that glare, the journalists remained quiet and let Red give a brief spiel about the vague direction the rest of their investigation was going to take, giving basic promises that they would do their best keep the public safe from whoever was behind this. And from any other detective, those promises would’ve sounded rote and empty, just basic police script that everyone knew was simply protocol. But from him, she believed it. Red did almost everything with commitment, and this wasn't any different.

The rest of the afternoon was more standing behind Cooper for another twenty minutes and looking solemn as he answered a few more questions and refused others. Liz forgot proper etiquette and let her mind wander freely, watching the faces and reactions of the reporters as they listened to Cooper and as they asked questions. There was one with a persistent twitch, and then there was a woman with a cough she was failing to slow with the tissue that she pressed hard against her mouth. Several of the reporters had furrowed brows and skeptical, curled lips. She wanted to go up to those and tell them to try to solve a murder and smack a case file into their hands.

At the end, she tried to disappear in amongst the few other officers that had been standing behind Cooper, and as she walked outside, she thought she’d lost the reporters, but one of them grabbed her shoulder, tugging on it. It was rude and audacious, and she probably should’ve ignored him, but she whipped around instead, eyes narrowed, heat in her gut.

“ _What_?” Her voice was hard, not the kind of tone she should’ve been using at all. She inhaled.

The reporter, a small man with a long mop of blonde hair falling in his eyes opened his mouth to talk, but his shoulder slumped as his eyes drifted past her.

“Hello there, have you gotten lost?” Red looked between the two of them with a thin smile.

“No, I was just…” The reporter glanced back at her and swallowed, fingers tapping against his notepad.

“I was simply giving you the benefit of the doubt, because I see no other reason to grab my partner’s shoulder with such aggression unless you’re hopelessly lost, separated from the rest of your muck racking herd.” Red settled a hand against the small of her back. “You look like you might have a moderate IQ, so I’d like to assume you know that the time for questions has passed.”

“Yeah, I guess I just got turned around.” The reporter started sliding away on one foot, jamming his note pad back into his coat pocket, his hair swishing as he turned around and headed far away from Red’s serenely threatening demeanor.

Liz wanted to tell him that she didn’t need help or defending, that she could’ve handled the man on her own. One reporter wasn’t enough to poke holes in her armor. But she’d taken solace in knowing he’d be there to lean on if she needed him, hadn’t she? And he’d done that.

“Um, thanks,” she said, pulling back her collar and scratching at her neck. The uniform was starting to itch the sensitive skin there.

Red’s eyes drifted down to her neck for a moment and lingered there before flicking back up to her. “Of course,” he said, like there was no question over what should’ve been done.

Like there was no question she was worth the effort. She pressed her lips together. She couldn’t keep thinking that way. Maybe he was casually attracted to her, but nothing more than that. And he cared for her, but probably not in the way she cared for him. But wasn’t that enough? She had someone now that mattered. That was good enough.

“Let’s get some coffee,” she sighed. “I’m drained.”

The warmth of his palm slipped from her back. “Lizzie, are you asking me to indulge in a cliche with you?”

He _would_ be the first to point out a cliche. “I didn’t ask you to get a donut, so it’s only half a cliche,” she said, crossing her arms.

He chuckled, soft in his throat. She’d grown to like that sound a great deal. “I suppose that’s good enough.”

Yes, she told herself. He was right. It was good enough. She could be satisfied with going to a small coffee shop with someone she cared for and sitting in a corner with him, laughing over the reporters and rolling their eyes.

That was more than she'd had in a long time. She had Red.

That was enough. 


	23. Chapter 23

The bird didn’t fly away as she passed. It just sat there on the branch above, head cocked, watching her with one eye that reminded her of a dark, glassy bead. Her calves didn’t burn as much as they did when she’d started running. Her arms still complained through mild aching, but she pushed through it. If she was to improve, she had to push through—which seemed to be her unspoken motto for the past year or two.

It was the second day after the press conference, and though they had hoped the announcement that the cold case had been solved might generate some tips or cause some suspect to come crawling out of the woodwork, nothing had happened yet. The desk phone remained silent. 

Last night when she couldn’t sleep, she’d been scanning through radio stations and heard a psychic medium talking about willing the events you wanted to happen into reality through sheer mental will.

Liz hadn’t believed a word any of it—and she didn’t remember most of it anyway, her hazy, tired mind letting it ooze out of her brain. Still, in her drowsy state, she’d wished that such a thing were possible. It would’ve made her job much easier.

The bushes she passed rattled against each other, leaves brushing and whispering together as a gust of wind whipped by. Her body shuddered with the gust, and she wished she’d thought to bring a jacket. But the jacket would’ve just slowed her down, and what would she have done with it if it started getting too warm?

She wasn’t going to let a little thing like the natural shift of seasons stop her morning runs until the ground was iced over. Even then, she’d probably be tempted to keep going. If nothing else, she was stubborn.

Behind her, the gravel skittered, rolling down the natural slope of the path. She glanced over her shoulder, frowning. She hadn’t felt any gravel or grit under scraping under her shoes. She would’ve felt it if there had been any. There were occasional patches of it that gathered along the edges and dips along the path, and she’d almost slipped on it once or twice in the past. She knew the feel of that loose gravel all too well now. She hadn’t disturbed any.

Maybe someone passing by on a path behind the bushes had shifted some. There weren’t many other early joggers she’d encountered, but there were a few. There were also two or three dog owners that she passed by some mornings, glimpsing them in the gaps of the tall bushes and trees, or passing them by on her own path. They’d become a variable in her routine, familiar enough that they would nod at each other if they passed by.

She kept going, feet bouncing along the path. There were all kinds of noises in the early morning—skittering squirrels in the brush, bird wings smacking leaves, dog claws clicking on pavement—and those were only a few of them.

The leaves of the bushes murmured again, only faint, only slight. Just a little scratch of the edge of a leaf against the middle of another, the slight groan of a branch. She stopped running. There hadn’t been any wind that time. She knew she hadn’t heard any dog claws, or the frantic batter of feathers against the brush.

It was something else, something heavy and substantial shifting—

A dark mass exploded from the bushes, leaves swirling around her like organic snow just before the mass tackled her in the chest, slamming her down onto her back.

The back of her head hit the ground, light bursting before her retinas. She’d been tackled before, she’d had her head banged before. But never so suddenly, or quite so hard. Some distant part of her chided herself for not paying more attention.

The rest of herself was already trying to assess the situation through a hazy fog, trying to decipher the person's actions so she could defend herself. It was a man dressed in black with a ski mask that was on top of her, straddling her middle, the heavy weight of his body shifting against her stomach. As one of his hands started to come for her face, she tried to lift her elbows to shield herself, but it was like urging two leaden weights to come up. She struggled as if in a dream—useless and slow.

His palm came down on her mouth, smacking so hard that her incisors cut into her mouth, metallic taste of blood exploding against her tongue. She tried to move her lips, get one finger in her mouth and bite down hard, but his hand lay flat on mouth, effectively muzzling her. She swallowed, head bobbing back against the pavement as she did. She couldn’t just lay here like this—still and complacent, letting him do whatever it was that he wanted.

The weight of his body shifted to one side, hand pressing down ever harder on her mouth. She swallowed again against the taste of metal and salt and tried to move her head, but the line of his arm blocked her vision, and the pressure on her face held her neck in place. She inhaled a shallow breath, pulse beating a wild cadence at the base of her jaw. If he moved his hand to her throat, she was certain he would be able to feel it, even with the gloves on.

He shifted again, and the pressure on her face released, if only a bit. She couldn’t see exactly where his body was, or where his legs were. She would have to go on intuition.

She lifted one leg and slammed her knee into the center of his back.

Grunting, the man fell forward, and his hand flew off her face to catch himself. She now lay beneath the arc of his heaving chest. He stank of sweat and the dirt smearing his dark clothing. She turned her head so she could see his arm to grab it, but as her cheek pressed into the grit and leaves against the pavement, she saw a knife still clutched in his hand.

It wasn’t a man trying to rob or have his way with her.

When he’d shifted, he’d been reaching for a knife.

Liz wrapped her elbow under his shoulder, hooked her foot on the outside of his leg and rolled, the brightening sky spinning and whirling around her, a smear of pink and red.

His head landed with a nice thump against the pavement. Her forehead was still bleeding from when he’d tackled her, so she couldn’t help but grin as she heard the noise. But somehow, even through the roll, he’d managed to still hold onto the knife. Liz wasn’t going to be having that.

She reared back to pin his shoulders, and the second before his arm came up, she knew that had been a mistake.

Even with a head that must have been throbbing, he half-lifted up from the ground and slashed toward her stomach with the knife. Her hand came up too late and the blade sliced her hand, specks of red spraying across his black shirt as she fall back once more, head hitting the ground in a burst of new stars.

This time, he didn’t bother to be careful. He didn’t cover her mouth, didn’t pin her. He just slashed again while her head exploded with compounded pain. The knife sliced through the thin fabric of her tank top, the tip of the blade pressing against the bare flesh of her stomach, just a pin prick at first, then—

It slid into her. She felt the cold steel part her flesh, like a man trying to gut a fish. All she knew then was the cold and a shrill noise like an animal with its paw being shredded in a trap— _screaming screaming and screaming_ \--

What a strange noise, she thought. Stranger still that she was the one making it.

Liz had often thought about how she might die. The acceptance of one’s death came with the title of police officer (or homicide detective). She had imagined she might die any number of ways—something as grand and blazing as a stray bullet to the head in a shootout, or something as mundane as being hit by a car while writing a speeding ticket.

But she hadn’t thought it could end this way—lying sliced open, alone and afraid as the dawn broke.

But then there was another noise. Not the animal one coming from her raw throat. It was something else— _someone_ else’s rough, deep shouts, shoes pounding the pavement.

The cold slid out of her and there was a scuffling sound, a rush of air, then a metallic clatter as the knife must have hit the ground.

A new shadow fell over her, broader and stockier, and she flinched, arms wrapping over her stomach, warm blood meeting her skin. She opened her mouth to say something, maybe to ask for help, maybe ask why, but all that came out was a gasp. A man knelt beside her, but he wasn’t masked or dressed in black. He tossed a tree branch aside, perhaps one that he’d found fallen on the ground and had tried to use as a makeshift weapon. Even as her head throbbed and her body oozed blood, she still couldn’t seem to stop analyzing things. The thought made her wheeze a halfhearted laugh. She could be dying, and she was puzzling over her own potential murder.

The man started to yank off a green hoodie that he wore over a white T-shirt. “Can you move your arms for me?” he asked, voice gentle.

She didn’t know if she should. Would her innards come out if she did? Had the wound been that deep? She kept her arms clamped over her stomach just in case.

“Please, I want to try to staunch the bleeding while I call for help. My hoodie will do the job a lot better than your arms.” He held the crumpled hoodie against his chest, his eyes wide in his pale face.

Well, his point was logical, so she conceded and lifted her arms away from her belly. When the clothing touched her abdomen, she hissed, teeth clenching as he put pressure on the wound. The man started saying something, but not to her. It sounded like he was talking to his phone, telling it to call 911.

She couldn’t use any of her energy to concentrate on the conversation, not while her stomach and hand were burning, still gradually trickling blood. When she caught a glimpse of the man’s hands slick and glistening with her own blood, fingers splayed over the ruined hoodie, she had to turn her head to the side, pressing her eyes shut hard.

After a few minutes, the man’s chatter to the 911 operator stopped and his fingers pressed down a bit harder on her stomach. She grimaced and pulled her eyes open.

“Hey, you need to keep your eyes open and talk to me, all right?” The man’s voice was thin and shaky.

“That’s what they told you to tell me, right?” She snorted, a leaf skittering away from her as she did.

“What’s your name? The ambulance will be here soon, but in the mean time, I need something to call you,” he said, voice tight.

Liz rolled her head to look back up at him with hooded eyes. “I’m Detective Elizabeth Keen.” She hadn’t originally meant to say _detective_ , but the word had just slipped out. The fact was irrelevant, but perhaps saying “detective” before her name had become a force of habit.

The man’s eyes widened a bit more, if that was possible. “You’re a cop? Did you know that guy?”

“I’m in Homicide, and I don’t know who that was.” Even if it had been some criminal she dealt with before, she wouldn’t have known with the mask. If it was someone she’d arrested before, had this been an attempted revenge killing? The thought reminded her of Red’s story of what had happened to his family.

And then the thought of Red made her eyes sting. He would know what to do right now, what to say. Doubtlessly, he would be panicked by his partner getting sliced, but—she wanted him here. Perhaps it was a selfish desire, especially since the stranger that had just saved her life was still in the process of saving it by preventing her from bleeding profusely, but she’d rather it be Red, with his soft reassurances and solid presence.

“My partner—Raymond Reddington. I want him here, okay? He needs to know about this. It’s important. Someone—” she pressed her teeth together, the talking becoming harder, “—someone needs to tell him. Please.”

The man leaned an inch closer to her, maybe to hear her more clearly. “Do you think he might’ve known who did this?”

“No—well, I don’t think so. It’s just that…” her eyes stung again, throat tightening, and she screwed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to cry in front of a stranger, even if that stranger’s hands were covered in her blood. “I don’t have anyone else.”

When she opened her eyes, the man nodded at her, a faint reassuring smile on his face. “Sure, sure. You don’t deserve to be among strangers right now.”

Maybe the words were just a platitude to keep her calm, but she mouthed a thank you, reaching up to touch the man’s hand, but yanked it away when the tips of her fingers came away wet.

* * *

Red tapped his pen on the edge of the desk, staring down at the black screen on his phone. It wasn’t like Lizzie to be late. Even when she’d come in looking harried and frazzled, she always came in on time. Perhaps always was an exaggeration—sometimes she would be several minutes late due to traffic, but never this long.

At first, he’d been a bit annoyed. They were so close to an answer, he could feel it. The closure to their case was just inches away, and he could imagine brushing his fingers against the final clue. Why would she have been so late when they were in the last stretches of their case?

He understood needing a break or if she’d become suddenly sick, but surely she would’ve called in if either with the case. And, with that thought, he had begun to worry. Because she wouldn’t have simply decided to stay home. Lizzie was resilient and stubborn, and even if she was suffering her way through a cold, he didn’t doubt that she would’ve fought him every step of the way if he tried to insist that she needed to go home, that she was no good to anyone if she was sick.

Three times tried to call her phone, and every time it went to voice mail. After that, he tried to concentrate on his paperwork, but his mind kept wandering, kept spinning new scenarios. Red tried to tell himself that he was just being overly concerned—maybe traffic was exceptionally bad and her phone battery had died. Both of those things were reasonable explanations.

He tried to tell himself she’d walk in soon, complaining about a traffic jam, and he’d laugh, all the while mentally berating himself for being so paranoid.

But then one of the patrol officers came by his desk, fidgeting and glancing around. She looked familiar. He thought she might’ve been one of the uniforms at the Schneider murder scene—Lizzie had seemed to know her. He thought her name might've been Lucy.

“Excuse me, Reddington. I don’t mean to interrupt, but there’s a call I received and it’s about Detective Keen.” She laced her fingers together.

His entire body tightened. “What is it?”

“It appears that someone attacked her in a park this morning. Her head is cut, and her hand and stomach got sliced by a knife. I don’t know how bad it is, but—”

“The address,” he snapped. In the back of his mind, he knew she didn’t deserve to be the brunt of his anger and fear, but any defenses he had weren’t prepared for this news.

Lucy swallowed, pulled out a notepad and wrote down the address, tearing off the page and handing it to him. He snatched it from her, read it over, and hurried for the exit.

* * *

 _Not again, not again, not again_ , was the cadence in his mind as he approach the scene flanked by a mix of black uniformed officers and white coated paramedics. Even as he approached from a distance, the signs of the attack were visible—leaves and gravel scattered around, foot prints in the dirt near the bushes, and the blood.

Red had seen countless crime scenes, had seen small specks of blood dotting the tile, and large splatters and sprays up and down walls and matting carpets. One had to become desensitized to scenes like that if one was a homicide detective.

But seeing the blood of someone you loved splattering the ground—there wasn’t any way to prepare yourself for that. It was only a moment later that he realized…he supposed that he might love her, didn’t he? It just had to be something like this that made him realize it.

His fingers were cold as stood at the wall of white and black backs, neither the uniforms neither nor the paramedics noticing him for a moment. He could’ve said something gruff and authoritative to get them to open the gap, but whatever he could have said stuck in his throat as he caught glimpses of her between the gaps in their shoulders. There were two paramedics kneeling next to her, one helping her, and the other talking to her. Her face was pale, sweat glistening on her cheeks.

Finally, one of the standing medics turned around, frowning at him. “Sir, you need to move along—”

“Let me see her,” he finally said, sharp and tight. “I’m her partner,” he continued, pulling out his badge and flipping it open so that the medic could see that he was not, in fact, a morbid gawker that wanted to revel in the scene of an almost murdered woman.

The medic still frowned, but the paramedic next to her craned his neck. “Let him come over. She’s been asking for him. Maybe his presence will keep her calm and focused.”

Without waiting for any confirmation from the frowning medic, Red walked around him and initially had to keep himself from rushing over to her, but it wasn’t hard to slow his steps when he saw the dried blood smearing her arms and the spatter on the ground near her torso.

His stomach twisted. Whoever did this to her deserved to be sliced too—and worse.

A faint smile flickered over her face when she saw him. “Red.”

He knelt down beside her, and she reached out a hand to him, fingers trembling. He took her hand gently, folding his fingers over her own that looked like they were covered in a layer of rust. “Hey,” he whispered.

The paramedic on her other side glanced up at him. “She’s been trying to move around a lot before you got here. She’s disoriented right now, but just keep talking to her okay?”

As if he would’ve done anything else. Even if the paramedic hadn’t wanted him to, he would’ve kept talking to her. “You’re gonna be okay, Lizzie,” he said, running his thumb over the back of her hand. Her loose grip on his hand tightened.

“I know,” she said, her voice distant, "because you’re here now.”

And, with that, he thought his heart might break.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thing 1: Welp...that happened. 8'D  
> Thing 2: I listened to the song "Unwed Henry" off the American Murder Song album quite a bit while writing this chapter, so go check it out if you feel so inclined.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay of this chapter. Various personal stuff going on has prevented me from concentrating on writing as much, and so my future updates may take a bit longer than some people are used to, but I'm still finishing this thing one way or another.

He sat hunched in a chair in the waiting room, staring toward the opposite wall. Over the past several hours, Red had become horribly, intimately acquainted with that room. There was a small crack in the plaster in the right corner, and there was an older woman with one glass eye sitting across the room from him that hadn’t looked up from her copy of War and Peace once. There was a framed photograph behind the woman’s head of a pink flower on a white background, and he resented how calm and serene it was. He’d entered that room with a frantic fear inside his chest that had eventually died down to a quiet burn. Whatever the outcome, he needed to remain calm. It was not the time nor the place to be emotional.

Several hours ago, it had almost been a fight to get Lizzie into the ambulance—her grip on his hand had been a vice when they told her they wanted to load her in. Only after after he smoothed her hair and whispered reassurances to her did her hand slide off. He hated how cold her fingers gradually became as he’d been holding her hand. It was like he could feel her life and warmth gradually slipping away under her skin.

The paramedics had let him ride in the passengers seat of the ambulance, too. Something about their ambulance company having an allowance for one friend or family member ride along if they wished, and seeing as she seemed to need him…there hadn’t even been a question of whether he would go or not. The paramedic had just said, _You can get up front if you want_.

He’d spent the entire trip in silence, trying to push down the urge to ask how she was doing every few minutes. Any interruptions could hinder paramedics’ efforts and distract them. He would be the last person to ever do that, but he still hadn’t been able to stop himself from glancing over his shoulder and watching the people in the back do their work on her.

Initially, he’d tried to keep track of the time since they took her in to be examined and stitched up—fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes—but at a certain point he yanked his sleeve over his watch, pressing a hand down over his wrist.

But that didn’t stop him from lifting his head, looking up expectantly every time a doctor or nurse entered the room, only for them to start talking to someone else. And after several minutes of debating whether to go over the woman with the book and engage her in a discussion on Tolstoy, a doctor rounded the corner, making him jerk his head up.

“You came in with Elizabeth Keen, correct?” The doctor had slicked back brown hair and a square chin that made him look like some actor that had walked off the set of Grey’s Anatomy.

“Correct,” he said, frowning at the rasp in his voice.

“I’m glad to report that the wound to her stomach wasn’t deep. None of her organs are damaged, but she did however receive quite a long slash to her abdomen. The hand cut was somewhat deeper, but I don’t anticipate it causing her any long term problems as long as she takes care of it properly,” the doctor said with a mild, reassuring smile. In another instance, he might have been annoyed by how the man’s manner seemed so polished, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed by someone telling him that Lizzie was going to be fine.

He cleared his throat before speaking. “May I see her?” Even if the doctor said no, he would be awfully tempted to shove past him and go see her anyway.

“If you want. She’s awake now, but she’s still a bit groggy.” The doctor took a step back and waved one arm. “Follow me this way.”

As Red stood, his legs felt nerveless—like he wasn’t quite inhabiting reality, that instead the ground he was treading was something insubstantial. He followed behind the doctor, taking turns down identical white hallways that smelt of sharp disinfectants. Finally, the doctor stopped at Lizzie’s room and guided him inside. Lizzie’s face was tilted away from them, her distant eyes tracking the action on the television screen mounted to the wall above her. Someone on the show she watched was very carefully looking at the hardwood floor in the living room of a large house.

“Miss Keen,” the doctor said, taking a step closer to her bed. “Your partner from work is here to see you.”

Her eyes drifted slowly away from the screen, her head rolling over on the pillow to look at him past the doctor. He gave her a small smile. She lifted one hand from under the hideous green blanket and raised it to wave him over, but she stopped when she saw that it was the bandaged one.

“Hey, Red,” she said, voice hoarse. “Come over and watch House Hunters International with me.” She nodded her head at the television, where the scene had changed to a couple frowning over a marble counter top.

The doctor turned and began to walk out of the room as Red grabbed a chair from the corner and pulled it up next to her bed. As he did, she watched him the whole time, the blue of her eyes somehow washed out and dulled by pain killers and her close brush with the grim reaper, but there was still a faint smile on her chapped lips. He started for her unbandaged hand, but she offered it to him before he even touched her.

He turned her hand over, inspecting her palm, though he knew if there were any other cuts the surgeons would have noticed. The only blemish on that hand was her scar, turned shiny and iridescent in the glaring lights above.

“How are you feeling?” He pulled his eyes away from her hand.

She exhaled a laugh and leaned her head deep into the pillows, closing her eyes. As close as he was, he saw the blue spider webbing of veins on her eyelids, made visible by her pale skin. His hand tightened on hers. “I feel like I almost got murdered,” she said, snorting, opening her eyes.

Despite himself, and despite the horrific nature of what had almost happened, he laughed. Lizzie never had been one to mince words. If she was feeling well enough to engage in dry humor, that was a good sign. “You know you really do make it hard to know where the effects of the pain killers ends and where your natural bluntness begins.”

Something flickered in her eyes and she swallowed, but then she rolled her eyes and looked back at the screen, bandaged hand limp on her chest. “If I started saying weird things, please—for both our dignity—go home.”

“I’m not going to do that,” he said. He saw her worse than this. He saw her when she was in shock, bleeding out onto the cement, clinging onto him with a fierce desperation. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Her jaw tightened and she pressed her lips together, running her teeth against the inside of her mouth. “I should’ve known you would say no.”

He ran his thumb over her scar, the muscles in her wrist tensing as he did. The tip of his thumb lingered at the edge of the ruined skin. His eyes flicked up to her. “You’re not the only stubborn one.”

“That’s why we’re probably the most annoying pair of detectives in Homicide,” she said, her wrist relaxing as he moved his thumb away from her scar. “I bet they’ll be glad to have a break from me.”

“I think they’d be more happy if I had been sliced. At the very least, I’m sure it would put a skip in Donald’s step.” If he could’ve switched places with her in the park that morning, he would’ve. If there was any proof that the universe was unfair, it was that she had been the one to take a knife to the gut instead of him.

“I don’t want to talk more about one of us getting stabbed. Can’t you think of one of those elaborate stories of yours? I’m tired of hearing Karen and Darrell complain about their prospective home not having granite counter tops.” She started to sit up to grab the remote on the night stand near her, but winced, yanking her hand away from him and laying it flat against her stomach.

“I’ll get it.” He stood from the chair, picked up the remote, and handed it to her.

She sighed and nodded at him, pressing her thumb onto the “off” button. “I hate feeling so incapacitated,” she said, sliding further down under the covers, a deep scowl on her face. The edge of the blanket started sliding off her shoulder and he tugged it back up.

“I understand. I cracked a few ribs years ago and couldn’t move without feeling like a champion baseball player was bashing me in the side with a bat.” He raised his eyes to the ceiling as he sat back down, laying his hands flat on his thighs. “Feeling helpless and out of control of your basic needs is the worst feeling in the world.”

He shook his head and looked back over at her, laughing softly. “But you asked for no more stories of that nature, so I’ll give you a better one.”

She silently opened her palm to him again and he took it, slipping his fingers between hers, noting that their hands fit well together. He cleared his throat and began to tell her the story from when he was a young uniformed officer—all blonde and skinny and over confident, breaking up an altercation between two men that had been playing tennis. He imitated the voices of the men for Lizzie, using his free hand to gesture and swing an imaginary tennis racket around.

The story itself wasn’t altogether remarkable, but as he told it, she smiled and laughed, though her laughter was subdued, perhaps so as not to pull the stitches along her stomach. At the end of it, as he was describing trying to stifle a bloody nose he had received from a racket as he dragged the two men in for booking, Lizzie was covering her mouth, trying to hide a grin.

“Did I ever tell you about The Denny’s Incident?” she asked, voice muffled behind her hand.

“I don’t believe you did. Is it legendary?” Typically, stories about incidents that happened to the uniforms didn’t make their way up to the detectives, but if the story was strange enough—say, a man that had been pulled over for toting a rifle in the passenger seat of his car that turned out to be loaded with silver bullets—it bubbled up to the top and circulated the upper divisions of the department for a few days.

“Well, it was for me,” she lowered her hand and exhaled slowly through her lips. “I went on a date with this guy, and it was really unspectacular. Then I get a call a week later, right? An employee called the cops because there was a drunk guy naked in the men’s room at a Denny’s.”

“You’re not saying—”

“ _Yep_.” Liz pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows. “My date from the week before, stark naked at a Denny’s. I managed to avoid having to arrest him, but it was still one of the most mortifying moments of my life.”

Red’s shoulders shook with laugher, imagining Lizzie’s horrified wide eyes as she answered a standard call and realized who the naked man was. He was terribly grateful the only time he’d had to arrest a former flame she’d be clothed.

“Red?” her voice was quieter now, lapsing back into her earlier tone of despondency.

His face fell into a frown and he squeezed her hand. “Yes?”

“I need to get some sleep, and your cat probably needs to be fed or something. You should go. You don’t need to stay here. The doctors said they’ll probably release me tonight.” Her fingers started to full away from him. He let his hand go slack.

He didn’t want to leave her. Even if she needed sleep, he would’ve gladly stayed by her bedside as she did so, up until the moment she was released from the hospital. But if his leaving would set her at ease and allow her to relax, then he wasn’t going to be selfish.

“All right, but please do call me at any time if you need anything.” He rose from his chair and smiled down at her. She suddenly seemed so small then, exhausted and wrung out, barely running on fumes.

“Sure.” She curled her good hand around the edge of her blanket and nodded, smiling with her pale, cracked lips.

He leaned over her, brushed her hair away from her face and kissed her forehead. Perhaps he imagined it, but he thought she might’ve sighed. Her eyes flicked back up at him as he straightened and ran the pad of his thumb over her cheek. “I’ll see you soon, Lizzie.”

* * *

Liz felt unemployed.

Of course, she still had a job waiting for her when she recovered, but Cooper had put her on leave until that point. And the way she felt wasn’t a good kind of unemployed—when you’d just quit a job you hated, but knew you had a new job lined up for you that you’d have your first day at in a few weeks. No, it was the sort of gray unemployed feeling of sitting at home in sweat pants, scrolling through job postings and submitting resumes for few hours every day only to be met with no results.

It was the feeling of coming to a gray wall of fog and not knowing what was on the other side. The feeling of _what now_? She would return to Beck’s case once she recovered, but would the man that had tried to kill her ever be caught? Was he connected to a past case she worked—or perhaps even the Beck case?

She’d run over each possibility so many times that, if her thoughts were stones, they would be polished and smooth from how she turned them over. But the only thing at the moment she could do was think, and she hated it. She wanted to be back in the office, making calls, following leads. She even wanted to be doing paperwork.

As she’d told Red yesterday in the hospital room, she hated how useless she felt. She’d only been home half a day on leave, and she was already starting to feel like she was going mad. The fact that she was curled up on the couch, hugging a pillow to her stomach as she watched a marathon of Chopped didn’t help her trapped mindset.

And when her phone rang in the middle of a shouting match between two contestants, the sound of the ring was almost lost amid the argument. She muted the TV, and reached down to grab her phone. She simply answered the call without seeing who it was.

“Yeah?” she sighed. Liz frankly couldn’t be bothered not to sound exhausted. She had almost been murdered—she thought she was allowed to sound a little less than enthused to receive a phone call.

“Hello, Lizzie,” Red’s rich voice said from the end of the line. She scooted up a little. “I was simply calling to check up on you.”

“I can’t say I’m doing great, but I can’t complain about some time off, can I?” Actually, she could. She just wasn’t going to. But she didn’t want Red to worry himself over some trivial complaint of hers. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been grateful for all the support and care he’d shown within the last forty eight hours. In fact, she was immensely touched by his concern, but she just…didn’t know how to process it, and she didn’t want to add to his worries.

“I doubt anyone would blame you for any complaints that you happen to have. People in your position should be granted some leeway in that department,” he said, tone light, but she still knew he meant every word.

“How’s the Beck case going? Have you found anything more out?” Liz needed a distraction from her current woes, even if that distraction came in the form of a stalled case.

Red was silent for a moment. “Not yet. Everything seems to be a dead end, and…I can’t say my mind has been completely focused on the case right now.”

Her heart pounded. “Don’t distract yourself because of me. I’m fine.”

“I know,” he sighed. “But I—you know that I care for you immensely. Your well being is one of my greatest concerns.”

Her eyes started to well up, and she was glad he wasn’t in the room to see it. She could blame her emotions on her injured state, but she knew that wasn’t just it. It was the romantic attachment she’d developed for him too, and the fact that he’d been so kind towards her lately made her dearly hope his affection might be more than the bond between two partners. She’d even wanted to kiss him on the mouth when he’d leaned over her yesterday.

“Hey, I should let you get back to work. Those murderers aren’t going to turn themselves in. I’ll talk to you later.” Liz didn’t let him protest, she just ended the call.

* * *

The hum of occasional nocturnal traffic vibrated in her ears, and a loud conversation between two men outside her apartment building drifted up through her window, the exact words muted and muffled, only their harsh tones left when they reached her bedroom. She let out a guttural groan and pressed her hands against her eyes.

She was barely running on two hours of sleep. She’d tried to go to bed at eight o’clock, but she’d spent the last two and a half hours alternately shifting, trying not to strain her stitches, and staring at the ceiling. Against her better judgment, she gave up on trying to sleep and grabbed her phone from beneath her pillow and opened the news, scrolling through articles about political scandals and scientific break throughs until she found and clicked on one that looked sedate enough. Halfway through, she found her attention drifting and her eyes glancing down to the “call” icon on the bottom of the screen.

As she typed in Red’s number, she thought maybe she was just contacting him to apologize for ending their call abruptly earlier, but when he picked up, she found another, more plausible excuse escaping her mouth.

“I was just wondering if they know anything yet about the guy that attacked me,” she said.

“I am told that they found prints on the knife, but…” he let out a heavy sigh and his voice became a sharp growl, “several officers touched the knife ungloved, so it’s going to take longer for the lab to process it as they compare the fingerprints off the handle to the officers that touched it.”

Liz pressed a hand to her forehead, trying to will a headache not to build. “What kind of idiots would do that?”

“An excellent question that I asked myself as well,” he said, sounding just as annoyed as she was. “But the attempted murder of a detective isn’t something that happens very often, so the officers on the scene lost their heads a bit and forgot basic protocol.”

“They—were worried about me?” She knew that wasn’t exactly what he’d said, but the implication had still been there.

A soft exhalation of breath followed by thick silence. Then, “…Of course they were. Despite what Decker and a few others might think, you are well liked and even admired, even though you may not know it. Your attempted murder was the main talk of the department today. I had several people come by my desk asking for your address in order to send you get well cards, and yet others wanting me to tell you their well wishes. Lizzie, you are… _utterly_ charming and _immensely_ likable. Anyone who can’t see that is entitled to their opinion, but is still completely wrong.”

This time, she couldn’t prevent a tear from running down her cheek. She immediately scrubbed it away with the back of her hand. “I guess I’m just used to feeling alone. I mean, I know I have you, but—”

She inhaled and swallowed. “Anyway, asking about my case isn’t the only reason I called.”

He didn’t say anything, perhaps waiting for her to continue, or maybe he could hear the way her voice cracked and knew she needed to gather herself.

“I can’t sleep. Would you mind…reading something to me?” The question surprised herself. She didn’t know if that’s why she had called in the first place, but maybe it had been. She’d just wanted to hear his voice beside her, calming her.

“Of course not. Is there anything in particular that you want?” Something creaked in the background, and his footsteps echoed against his floor.

“I don’t have anything in mind.” Liz tried to remember what she’d seen in his bookshelf when she’d visited him. There had been books about art and history, but those weren’t exactly material meant to be read aloud, and she couldn’t remember any of the fictional titles.

“How about The Importance of Being Earnest?” The sound of fluttering pages came over his end of the line.

“That’s a play, not a book,” she pointed out.

“I could still read it to you. It’s meant to be performed and read aloud, after all,” Red said, shuffling something in the background.

“I don’t think I could take you seriously ever again if you tried to imitate the voice of an old Victorian woman,” she said. The idea of him sitting alone in his apartment, his phone sitting next to him as he tried to force his voice into a falsetto for her was enough to almost make her laugh.

“You doubt my acting capabilities?” his voice pitched up, sounding mock offended.

“I’m just saying your vocal range is a lot more suitable for a dramatic documentary narrator, or one of those guys with deep voices that advertises cars.” She had to admit that if she ever saw a car commercial with a voice over that sounded like Red, she would be sorely tempted to go out and view the car in a lot. She probably would never admit it to him, but his voice was one of the most attractive things about him.

“Fine.” His footsteps echoed again and he snapped the book closed. “By the way, I can’t say I’m completely offended after you just highly complimented me.”

“Do you own The Maltese Falcon or something? I’ve never seen the movie, but maybe the book would be interesting,” she said. He seemed like a character that should be in a noir movie, so she’d be disappointed if he didn’t own the original novel the movie was based on.

He sighed. “You know me too well, Lizzie.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

The sound of pages being ruffled came again, and eventually his chair creaked as he sat back down in it. For a moment, she wished she was next to him, feeling the vibration of his voice against her as she leaned into him. But instead, she simply switched her phone to speaker and lay on her back, closing her eyes.

“ ‘Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony…’ “ he began, and after a few minutes, she lost track of what he was reading. The words started to blend together, a comforting, rumbling white noise next to her ear as her mind started to unclamp from its worries and relax, drifting into a peaceful haze.

Dimly, as her mind started to shut out all awareness of her surroundings, she thought she heard him whisper, “Sweet dreams, Lizzie.”


	25. Chapter 25

“He kinda had big eyes,” the woman named Denise said, waving her hand in a circle around her face.

The sketch artist beside Red paused with his pencil in the air, thin lips pressed together as he glanced up, waiting for another clarifying question to be asked. He knew that the woman was doing her best to remember a man exiting the park early in the morning while he was in shadow, but he still wished that she was able to provide more details without first being prompted.

“Do you mean that he had a wide eyed look, or that his eyes were simply large?” He laced his fingers in his lap and leaned in closer to her.

Denise raised one eyebrow and crossed one leg over the other, drumming her fingers on her thigh. “Both. He was glancing around like he was nervous, but he had naturally big eyes.”

“And his chin? What did it look like?” The man he’d talked to earlier that had saved Lizzie said that her attacker had been wearing a ski mask, but that it looked like his chin was thick beneath it.

“Oh, definitely square, but not in a classical handsome way, you know? More square in a thick-jawed, football player kind of way.” She gestured in the air again, drawing an invisible thick, brick-like jaw in the air with her index finger.

The sketch artist’s pencil whispered against the paper as he laid down harsh, thick lines to create a hard jaw that looked like it could’ve been used as a hammer. Whenever Red sat beside a sketch artist he was amazed how the eye witness’ descriptions flowed out of the tip of the pencil—the pinched eyebrows just right, the suggestion of a scowl perfect. Drawing was one of the talents that he occasionally wished he possessed.

The artist laid his pencil on its side and slashed it back and forth to create shading beneath the man’s chin before flipping it around to show Denise. The sketch showed a man with large, dark eyes staring out from his square face, forehead made wide and tall by a mess of hair swept backwards.

“Yes, that was definitely the man I saw walking out of the park,” she said, head wobbling up and down.

“Show me again the path he was taking,” he said, and removed a map from a folder that he had already shown her when she’d given her initial statement. He had to be certain that she knew what she’d seen.

Denise slipped the map out from between his fingers and lay it in her lap, one finger pressed to her cheek as she squinted down at the small squiggles and blobs representing paths and trees in the park. She dragged her finger away from her cheek and tapped one long, peach painted nail on the path that lead directly away from where Lizzie had been sliced.

“Like I told you before, it was definitely this one,” she said, nodding to herself. “He was almost out of the park, but he was using this path to leave.”

“Do you remember anything else you haven’t told me already?” Red folded his hands and kept his gaze steady on her, trying to affect an air of patience, even if he didn’t feel it.

“So, I can’t be sure about this, but…” Denise sighed and raised her hand away from the paper, waving her manicured fingers in the air.

“Anything else you can provide could be potentially very helpful. At the very least, it will be something we didn’t know before,” he said, hoping to encourage her to be forthcoming.

She shifted in the seat and crossed her legs, tugging at her cardigan and smoothing out the bottom of it. “Well, as you know, it was dark,” she said, sweeping a hand over her pants to remove invisible lint. “But it looked like might’ve been bleeding from his right temple.”

After Lizzie had been well enough to describe her attack, a uniformed officer had been sent to her hospital room to take a statement from her. She’d said that during the scuffle she’d flipped the man onto his back and it looked like he’d hit his head. The man that Denise had seen was looking more and more likely to be their suspect.

“Is that helpful?” Denise lay her hands flat in her lap and cocked her head.

“Indeed, I think it will be.” He gave a her a slow, close mouthed smile. “You’re free to leave now, unless you have anything else to say.”

“Nah,” she said, shaking her head, starting to uncross her legs. “That’s all I’ve got. Sorry, Detective.”

“There’s no need to be sorry, as you’ve in fact been very helpful,” he said, starting to rise and dig a card out of his jacket pocket. As he handed it over to her, she flipped it over on the back, as if she expected an additional message to be written there. She turned it back over to the front, eyes scanning the minuscule font.

“Call me if you have anything else,” he said, nodding at the card with his number printed on it.

She flicked it in his direction. “Sure thing.”

With that, she grabbed her messenger bag up off the floor and pulled it onto her shoulder, straightened the strap, and walked out the door. Red turned away and glanced down at the drawing that still lay in the sketch artist’s lap, the suspect’s eyes wide, somehow soulless and glassy even when rendered in gray graphite. They were like the rolling, black eyes of a shark, thoughtless and hungry, only intent on rending and tearing.

Or perhaps he was just projecting his own feelings onto a simple drawing. The image did, after all, potentially show the face of the man who almost gutted Lizzie. There was no way he could separate the hatred that gnawed deep within him for the unknown man and the sketch in front of him.

“We’re not gonna get this out to the media yet. I don’t want our suspect knowing we’re after him and trying to high tail it out of town,” he said, jamming his hands into his pockets.

The sketch artist nodded at him. “Sure thing.”

His phone started vibrating against his palm, and he jerked his head up. It could have been anyone, but he hoped that it might have been Lizzie, although it was unlikely she would’ve been calling when she knew he was working. Even if it was her, he would’ve dropped everything to hear how she was faring.

“Excuse me, I need to take this.” He pushed out of the small room with his shoulder against the door, seeing that it was Aram’s name lighting up his screen as he answered the call.

“Did you get something off the traffic cameras?” He immediately asked, rubbing his forehead as he leaned against the wall.

“Well…” Aram’s voice was tight, “you said there was a woman who saw a man in dark clothes leaving the park the same time Detective Keen was attacked?”

“I just finished getting a more in depth description from her for the purposes of a sketch,” he said. He hoped that Aram’s questions were leading up to something hopeful. The quality off the traffic cameras might be bad, but even someone slightly matching Denise’s description of the man would be worth something.

“I found fifteen seconds of footage showing a dark clothed man walking out around the same time your witness reported seeing someone matching that description. His face isn’t very clear, but I’ve done my best to clean up the footage,” Aram said, his fingers hammering against the keys in the background. “I’m sending it over now.”

Red dropped his hand from his forehead and breathed out. “Thank you, Aram. I will check my e-mail now.”

He switched the phone off, silencing the small storm of clicking and tapping that was still going on in the background. As he returned to his desk, the same feeling from the hospital came over him—that sluggish, weighed down feeling like he was dragging himself through a mire, and each moment he spent working today was a moment to be endured.

He’d barely slept at all last night, even though he knew Lizzie was safely asleep in her bed. After he’d ended their call, he’d stared down at his copy of The Maltese Falcon for a long time, the pages yellowed and dusty, untouched and unloved. 

True, he knew she was safe and recovering, but he _also_ knew that the man that had tried to kill her was still out there, and that knowledge made it immensely hard to get any kind of sleep when his brain insisted on playing _what ifs_ on loop all night—dark and bloody _what ifs_ where she hadn’t been saved in time, where the knife had been driven deep inside her, cold and unforgiving, and her curling up like a small, frightened creature and dying on the wind stirred path, leaves fluttering over her.

He sank down into the chair in front of his computer as if there were an anchor wrapped around his waist, and opened up the file on the e-mail Aram had sent him. It included a video file as well as individual screen shots from the fifteen second film. He pulled his glasses out of his pocket and scooted in close to the monitor, pressing the play button on the footage.

It was black and white, showing only gently shivering blobs of silvery leaves in the breeze until a slanted shadow started so glide across the bottom of the screen, shortly followed by the owner of the shadow. A man hunched across the screen, clothes all black, head lowered, face grainy and featureless. Red set his jaw. _Look up, dammit_ , he willed the figure.

The man continued across the screen, gait slow and deliberate as he walked across the cross walk. A second before he disappeared off screen, he shot a glance over his shoulder, and he saw the sketch rendered minuscule—there was that thick jaw, wide eyes, and even a smudge on his temple that might’ve been a wound.

He tapped his finger against the space bar to pause the video and scrutinized the man, eyes scraping all of his visible features. He was supposed to remain objective, to keep his head about him and not rule out the possibility that this man wasn’t the culprit. And he would be careful, if only because he needed to remain careful to see that whatever bastard had knifed Lizzie was the one that was caught, not someone that he tried to nail to the wall in his haste to get a conviction.

But when he did get his man…

 _oh_ , what satisfaction that would be.

He closed the video and reached for a stack of files on his desk, flipping open a folder that had become well worn, despite the fact that Lizzie still didn’t know about it. He pressed his fingers to his lips and flicked through the articles about the Rostov fire again, skimming the notes he had written comparing the ‘78 fire with the arsonist he’d investigated.

He’d rolled over the different for the attack within the minute he’d returned to work yesterday, mentally striking out the unlikeliest ones. A random maniac? Possible, but a twinge inside him said that wasn’t it. He knew he should follow logic, and not subjective, random feelings, but his instincts were often correct. If they told him it wasn’t a freak attack, then it wasn’t a freak attack.

Red dropped his eyes back down to the file again. His arsonist had seemingly been a likely contract killer of sorts, and while he hadn’t found anything concrete on the criminal background of the Rostovs, he had managed to dig up an old police report that they’d been brought in for questioning related to a drug ring. The investigators had suspected them specifically since they’d been struggling since leaving Russia, only to become moderately comfortable after associating with known drug runners. If the man that set the ‘78 fire was Red’s arsonist, then perhaps the deaths of the Rostovs had been a hired hit as well. And perhaps, all these years later, the only survivor of the fire was being targeted as well.

But then again, the arsonist had never used a knife. It wasn’t as if the victims had been murdered and then were set aflame. The fire itself was always the cause of their deaths. And besides that, why go after her now, when she hadn’t come forward with any new information or publicly talked about the fire since she was a child?

He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed the file on the ‘78 fire. It had been a tenuous connection, but at least it had been something. He had few other ideas as to what the motive for Lizzie’s attempted murder was. Cooper had allowed him access to Lizzie’s old reports when she had been a uniform to see if any previous men that she had arrested matched the attack in motive or physical description, but so far none of them did. And even if any of them had, a good handful of them were still in jail.

The only other motive he could see was trying to silence her involvement in the Beck/Schneider case. On the surface, the reasoning made some sense—they had finally uncovered what had happened to a well known missing person, and were prodding into the activities of a businessman that may have hired a hit man.

Except there was no evidence at all for any of that, despite all the efforts he’d made so far. He glanced down at his watch. He still had half the day to go.

He opened the video back up and sighed. He _really_ needed a drink.

* * *

Her nails scrambled against the sofa as she jerked awake, heart galloping, mouth dry and tongue leathery. Someone murmured on the TV, hissing, whispered words her sleep addled mind couldn’t make sense of.

She was no stranger to occasional nightmares, but never before had she had nightmares so vivid. She could still feel steel pressed at the based of her throat, pulse beating against the tip, the ever present knowledge of how very, very thin her skin was. Then the knife glided down her body, and plunged inside her, thrust in by a faceless man. And even though she well knew it hadn’t really happened, her stomach still ached from a nonexistent wound.

Liz covered her face with her hands and groaned. How was she supposed to recover quickly when her sleep was being intermittently interrupted by dreams of what had almost happened to her? She slid her hands off her face, pushing her good hand into the couch so she could sit up. Her belly and left hand throbbed as she shifted, reminding her that her wounds were still only two and a half days old. She turned her head toward the window, where the darkness of the night oozed through the curtains.

When she’d fallen asleep, it had still been light out. It seemed that, without any kind of schedule or responsibilities, her body was losing track of time. That had happened often enough in college even when she did have responsibilities. Sometimes she would destroy her internal clock so thoroughly from hours of late night studying that her brain seemed to think that she was meant to sleep during the day even when she’d had enough sleep. She had almost become a vampire that subsisted, not on blood, but on take out and cheap food and snacks.

It seemed that she was reverting to that state, as her sleeping schedule was sliding back into the nocturnal, and her diet was essentially what it had been in college. Not that she’d felt like eating much, but what she had eaten recently was mostly soup or the odd piece of bread. Which was almost the diet of a prisoner, she thought. Except she wasn't imprisoned by anything except her body's pains and aches from her bruises and cuts, which naturally dulled any kind of appetite she had. Still, she hadn't eaten anything since early that morning, so she was about to make the aching journey to the kitchen when there was a heavy rap at her door.

She froze, the tendrils of the dream clinging to her mind, her fingers curling into the couch cushions. She couldn’t seem to will her body to move from its position, so she shouted, “Who is it?”

Her body stayed rigid and coiled until the reply came.

“Raymond,” Red said, his own raised voice muffled by the door. “I thought I might bring some food by and see how you were doing. I would’ve called, but I thought you might be asleep.”

Liz’s shoulders lowered and her fingers lay flat again against the couch. She still didn’t much want him seeing her like this, but at the same time, she wanted him with her more than ever. Talking to him yesterday had been some solace, but it hadn’t been the same as seeing him, feeling his gaze on her, his hands always seeming to be reaching for hers.

“I’m coming, just give me a second!” she called to the door and rose, making the slow journey across her living room to unlock the door.

When she pulled it open, Red stood in the doorway with that hat of his with the brim pulled down low like he was some kind of old fashioned gentleman caller. A plastic grocery bag dangled in his other hand, weighed down by whatever was inside.

She raised an eyebrow. “When you said you brought food, I thought you meant take out or something.”

“It is important to have protein after surgery, so I thought I would make you some chicken with a salad on the side. You’re free to help me if you want, but I assumed that you probably weren’t feeling up to doing that sort of thing right now.” He glanced down at her stomach where her T-shirt had ridden up, giving him a clear view of the bottom of the bandage. She tugged her shirt down.

It had been more than a year since anyone had made her dinner. After her divorce from Tom, she’d had friends over a few times and they’d made her some food, but after she started lashing out and pulling away, well…there was no reason for them to keep coming over. She’d didn’t blame them, but she still sometimes sat at her table, staring at the empty seat across from her, wishing that someone were there.

Liz backed up and waved her arm. “Sure, come on in.”

He lowered his head and walked in, surveying her entryway for somewhere to put down his hat or jacket. She didn’t have people over very often, so she hadn’t bothered to get a coat rack. She just hung her own jacket and coat in the hall closet.

“I can put those in the closet for you,” she said, holding out her arms for him to hand the jacket and coat over. His eyes lingered on her for a moment before he removed them and deposited them into her arms.

“You can go ahead and start setting stuff up in the kitchen while I put these away,” she said, already starting off for the closet.

She pulled the closet door open and set his hat on the shelf next to the two ball caps she owned and pulled out a coat hanger, sliding Red’s jacket onto it. She tried to ignore the fact how… _natural_ it seemed to have his things occupying the same space as hers. His dark jacket with its large collar didn’t seem out of place next to her smaller, lighter jackets that were reds and blues, and it was almost—dare she say—heartwarming to look up and see his gray fedora next to two bright ball caps she rarely wore. She stared down at the jacket and pressed it against her chest, the frame of the coat hanger jabbing her breastbone. 

The fabric was still warm from him wearing it.

The gesture was hopelessly sentimental, but she didn’t care. At least she wasn’t burying her face in it to smell his cologne—although she _was_ tempted to do that.

She pulled the coat away from her chest and slid it onto the coat bar with a metallic _clink_ and headed toward the kitchen, where she found ingredients spread out onto her counter and Red squinting at her iPod in its dock, arms braced on the counter.

“Red, I know you have a smart phone. Why are you looking at my iPod like it’s a mysterious piece of alien technology?” Liz leaned one shoulder against the doorway, her mouth edging up.

His head turned languidly toward her, mouth pursed. “I am not a Luddite, Lizzie. I simply don’t know how to make your dock play music through the speakers.”

She pushed away from the doorway and walked towards him, their arms almost touching as she stood over the counter with him. She couldn’t lean on it like he did—with one leg stretched out and hips tilted—with her stomach covered in stitches.

 “Let me do it,” she said, and turned the speakers on, then going to her music library. “Anything in particular you want to listen to?”

He clasped his hands and squinted at the iPod again, apparently having left his glasses at home (or perhaps he was simply to proud to put them on, even though they both well knew he used them sometimes). “Well, I can’t say I’m much interested in…what is that? Marianas Trench? Isn’t that a section of the ocean?”

“It’s a band, but I’ve got all kinds of music on here. My tastes are pretty eclectic. I know you like old music, so I can bring up an Oldies radio station on Spotify if you’d like me to.” She closed out of her library and her finger hovered over the green icon.

He blinked at her like she had just spoken another language. “All right.”

Liz opened Spotify and turned on the station that she mentioned to him. In a moment, _My Girl_ started to croon through the speakers of the iPod’s tiny docking station. A soft, faint smile flickered across Red’s face, and she thought his eyes might have started drifting towards her before he turned away to look at the ingredients again.

She inhaled. “I think I’m going to lay down while you work on dinner.”

She turned away from the song still playing in the kitchen, a gentle chorus as Red clunked and rustled about.

This is what longing felt like, she thought. Everything seemingly ripe for some romantic moment—the music, him making her dinner, his…looks—but then there were other things that weren’t right, like having a healing slit in your belly, and two years worth of betrayal from your ex-husband making you frightened of any kind of meaningful relationship again.

She flopped onto the couch and covered her face. 


	26. Chapter 26

“Red, you know I can do my own dishes, right? I’m not that much of an invalid.” Liz leaned her back against the counter, putting one arm between him and the sink. He raised his eyebrows at her. She raised one right back at him.

When he set his mind to something, Red was incorrigible. Especially, it seemed, when it involved taking care of her. She was touched with the concern he’d been showing her the past several days, but she didn’t want to be made to feel even more helpless than she already was. Doing dishes wasn’t exactly strenuous labor, and it was at least one of the few things that she felt like doing. The mindlessness of it was relaxing somehow.

He drummed his fingers on the counter, looking down at her, weight on one leg. He worked his mouth for a moment as she stared him down. “Fine,” he said, leaning away from the counter. “I don’t think your gloves would’ve fit my hands anyway.”

“I’ll go get your coat and hat, then,” she said, starting to take a step back before she saw something flicker in his eyes. Was it…hesitation?

“Very well,” he said, crossing his hands in front of him and tapping a thumb against his wrist. Liz narrowed her eyes. While he had been preparing dinner and while they’d been eating, he’d been as vivacious as ever. There was a reason for his turn in mood and the little nervous movements of his fingers.

“Is there something wrong?” She touched his hand, and his thumb stopped mid-tap.

He glanced down at her hand, lips parted, but no breath coming out. He only held the expression for a moment before his face flickered into a placid smile. The moment she saw it, she knew it wasn’t real. “Nothing at all. I’ll just be in your foyer while you get my things.”

Red turned from her, hand sliding from her grasp, back turned so she could no longer see whatever it was he was feeling. Liz had spent enough time pushing down her emotions and jamming them into obscure parts of herself to know he was doing the same thing. Except he was better at keeping from those emotions seeping out at inopportune moments. Hers tended to come out in a rush of anger or stinging eyes, though the former was more common.

She walked from the kitchen and toward the hall closet. As she stood on her toes, reaching for the brim of his hat, she wondered what had caused his shift in mood. He had been fine before she mentioned that she would get his things. Did he think she wanted him to leave? That she was tired of being around him by this hour? She tugged the fedora off its place between her hats, nearly dislodging a blue ball cap. She held it between her hands for a moment, biting her bottom lip, tapping her fingers against the brim of it. True, she was tired, but not so tired that she wouldn’t have minded if he’d stayed a little longer.

She pulled his jacket off the coat hanger and smoothed the fabric out with her palm, laying the collar flat so it wouldn’t awkwardly flare up behind his neck when he put it on. She’d gotten the feeling that, even with his sometimes arrogant, flashy attitude, Red didn’t like himself much. Did he think that he was a burden by taking up her time--that she was just putting up with him?

“Dammit, Red,” Liz said down to the jacket, sighing.

She folded the jacket over her arm and held the hat in one hand as she turned from the closet and nudged the door closed with her foot. As she approached the foyer, his back was to her, but he was still tapping one hand against his thigh. It immediately stopped when he seemed to feel or hear her approach.

He turned on one foot, still wearing that smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Lizzie, thank you.”

“No problem,” she said, holding out her arm and hand. He reached for the jacket, but stopped as he saw her mouth open.

She licked her lips and swallowed. “You know, you don’t need to feel like you have to leave this second. You should know enough by now that I’ll tell you what I want. And I don’t mind if you stay a bit longer if that’s what you really want.”

He lowered his eyes and pulled the jacket from her hand hard enough that the jerk of the fabric slipping off her arm made her skin tingle. His grasp on the hat was more delicate. “I’m certain you wouldn’t mind, but you’re tired—”

She crossed her arms over her chest, pressing her mouth to the side. “Stop treating me so delicately. What is this, the 19th century? I don’t appreciate being treated like I’m about to have vapors any second.”

Raising his hands into the air, he backed up an inch. With an exhalation, he said, “I wasn’t implying that at all, and I’m sorry if it seemed like I was. I just didn’t want to impose.”

Liz pulled her arms away from her chest and stepped towards him, lifting her chin to look up into his eyes. That false expression had fallen away, and now his mouth was drawn into a slight frown, brow wrinkled with vague regret that edged into resignation. She lifted her fingers to his jacket and started to button it up, trying not to pay attention to the warmth radiating off of him.

“I know you’ve been concerned. And…I really do appreciate it. But I’m fine, okay?” She ran a hand over his collar again, for it had become crooked, even despite her earlier efforts. While she smoothed it, he raised his hand and placed it over hers where it sat on her shoulder.

Her hand went slack beneath his. “And I’m _especially_ fine when my friend comes to visit me and brings me some food,” she said, and tried to maintain eye contact with him, but his eyes were so…sad and _raw_ that she couldn’t bear to.

“Lizzie…” The way he said her name was soft and low, and seemed to say a dozen things that he wanted to but couldn’t seem to bring himself to. The pad of his thumb stroked the back of her hand, as if his inability to say anything meant he had to show how he felt in some other way. It only made sense that he said it through touch. She knew, after this long, that he seemed to value touch more than most people did.

“…Red?” And in her mouth, his own name was always question, a reaching for something.

He peeled his hand away from hers and shoved it into his pocket, but she could see the outline of his hand as he flexed his fingers. “I’m glad I saw you. I hope that you’ll be back at work next week.”

He didn’t even give her a chance to tell him goodbye before he walked out the door.

* * *

Red didn’t come back any other days that week, even though she’d wanted him to. During one of their phone conversations, she’d even told him he should come over and they could watch a movie, that she would let him pick it and she would pull a bag of popcorn out of her cupboard and would try not to burn it. His laugh had been light and breathy, and he’d given some kind of sarcastic remark before he moved on to other matters.

The rest of the week ran into a blur, like a dye sinking into a jar of water and permeating all of it—no distinction left in any of the particles. So it was strange when she woke up the Monday after her week of leave and headed back into the homicide department. It was like she’d been roused from a long, rather dull dream, and only now she was stepping back into reality. The feeling was similar to the way she had always felt when she went back to college after a vacation.

She had no expectations when it came to her first day back from leave. All she expected was to slip back into the routine like nothing happened, aside from the occasional painful reminder in her stomach and hand that she’d almost been killed. But as she approached her desk, she saw someone waiting there that was not Red. The man was tall and slim and had his back to her, and so it took her a moment to realize who it was.

“…Aram?” She came to him around the side so she wouldn’t surprise him as she’d done before.

“Detective Keen!”

Before she could say anything else, he enveloped her in a hug that she was only able to awkwardly reciprocate through extracting one arm from his embrace and patting his shoulder. Perhaps she’d wondered if someone would say _welcome back_ , but she hadn’t thought she’d be greeted by a hug first thing in the morning.

Aram pulled away from her. “I’m glad to see that you’re back. And you look really good! I mean—” he waved a hand, breathing a soft laugh, “ _considering_.”

Her mouth twitched as she slipped her bag off her shoulder and laid it down on her desk beside her laptop. Liz was glad that at least _someone_ was finding some kind of levity in her situation. She could only take so much hand wringing. “I’m unbelievably happy to _be_ back. You wouldn’t have any idea how sick I got of sitting on my couch in sweats. Do you know that I almost watched a _marathon_ of Cops because I missed work so much?”

Aram winced and blew out a breath. “You must’ve been really desperate.”

“Yeah, but my resolve held.” She clenched her good hand and shook it in the air. Actually, it hadn't fully held. She said she didn’t watch the marathon of Cops, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t watched several episodes over the period of a few days.

“I’m proud of you, Detective. Also, um, I have something. For you.” He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a card, and held it out to her. She took it between her hands and looked down at it, unable to say anything for a moment.

It was one of the sorts of large, stiff cards that could be purchased at the grocery store. On the front of it, there was a chocolate lab on a white background, its chin on its paws as it stared doe-eyed up at the words above it that said, “Sit. Stay. Heal.”

“I didn’t buy it,” Aram clarified, as if he was just now realizing how cheesy it might seem. “But I did sign it!”

He came closer to her and flipped the card open with one finger, then tapped where he’d signed it in the right left hand corner. His message was long, but the writing was tiny and cramped in order to accommodate others that had wanted to sign the card. And there were so many other signatures, even if some of them were only short messages that said, _I’m sorry for what happened to you_ or _I hope you heal up soon_. It wasn’t a dramatic, over the top gesture. It wasn’t a banner hung up in the ceiling in her honor, or a basket of fruit and a bottle of wine.

That didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Red had been right—the homicide department cared, and even, by the looks of it, other divisions cared too. She even spotted the names of a few uniformed officers she’d worked with until she’d become a detective.

Apparently taking her silence for dislike, Aram clasped his hands behind his back. “I’m sorry if it’s not—”

“No, no!” She pulled her eyes up, shaking her head so hard her ponytail hit her neck. “I love it. I honestly do.”

“Oh! Well, I’m glad for that,” he said, shifting from one foot to the other. He glanced behind himself. “Sorry, I should probably get back to work. Tech is dealing with this deep web illegal weapons ring and—anyway. I’ll see you later, Detective Keen.”

“I hope next time I see you I won’t have to use the excuse of tracking down an identity broker!” She closed the card and held it in the air, as if she was waving it like a flag to see him off.

“I see that you received the card the office picked out for you,” Red said as she spun around. She’d prided herself on him rarely surprising her anymore. At least he hadn’t made her jump.

She pushed the card into one of the pockets of her bag and picked it up by the strap, dropping it underneath her side of the desk. “How long were you standing there?”

“That depends. Do you feel guilty about doing something?” He came towards her with that confident saunter of his with none of the unspoken, frightened hesitancy he’d displayed last week. He came to stand in front of her, only a foot of space between them, eyes lowered. Somehow, even though they were almost the same height, he seemed to be able to make himself appear much taller than he was.

“I think I prefer Aram’s greeting to yours.” She hooked her foot around the leg of her chair and sat down.

“Come now, admit that you’re glad to be back.” Red stood in front of her with one hand on a folder, finger tapping against the edge of a paper sticking out of it. Red liked teasing people for different reasons—sometimes to get on their nerves to get what he wanted, or because he just felt like it. Or because he was trying to cover something up.

She started flipping open a notebook in front of her, pursing her lips as she lowered her eyes to it. “Well, I’m not _unhappy_ about it,” she said.

“I heard you telling Aram how you almost succumbed to your _desires_ of…wanting to watch Cops,” he said, voice floating above her.

She wrinkled her nose and raised her eyes to him. “Did you have to make it sound illict?”

He raised his eyebrows and dragged his chair up to her and sat down. “I _didn’t_ have to. I _wanted_ to.”

“…So, do you have anything else on the suspect besides what you told me last week?” Liz tapped the end of her pencil in a steady rhythm against her notebook. She didn’t mind the banter, but they needed to get back to business.

“Yes, actually. It looks like the fingerprint results from the knife are back from the lab—and in a much more timely manner than before, so kudos to them, I suppose—and we’ve got a match.” He slid an envelop over to her, fingers spread out.

Her eyes flicked away from his down to the envelop. His fingers didn’t lift. Grasping the edge of the envelop, she slid it out from beneath his fingers, the paper crinkling as she did. He folded his hands in his lap while she reached into the envelop, eyes focused on her fingers.

Lifting the papers out, she looked at the mug shot displayed on the front page for a moment, her dry lips pressed together as she gazed into the eyes of the man who might have tried to kill her. It was only paper, and only ink put down in the shape of a man, but his flat eyes looked the same to her. She knew it wasn’t a rational thing to think, but she had to believe that the basest, most animal parts of her mind couldn’t forget the eyes of someone that had tried to kill her. That kind of thing was seared into your neurons. She flipped past the front page and skimmed the details about the man and his short wrap sheet.

“Sanford Egan,” she said, turning the name over in her mouth. It didn’t taste like the name of a killer—but then she knew _that_ was an irrational thought. Even more irrational than the ones she’d had earlier.

“Yes,” he said curtly.

“Cooper said he wanted me on desk work for my first day back, so I’ll see what else I can find out about Egan while you go and find places he might be laying low—motels, homeless shelters, whatever.” She shoved the papers back into the envelop and tossed it onto her side of the desk, where it landed next to an unorganized pile she’d made. The pencil container rattled with the impact, scooting a few inches closer to the end of the desk.

Red made no move to leave. He lowered his eyes and chewed the inside of his lip, brow furrowed. She was almost about to ask if she’d said something wrong when he stood from his seat.

“That sounds like a good enough plan,” he said, but it almost didn’t sound like he was fully talking to her.

* * *

Perhaps internet research was less physically demanding than what Red was doing, but it was no less mentally taxing. Before plunging into the depths of internet research, Liz had scanned over Egan's files again, trying to get a handle on his profile based on the information provided. 

Egan had only been arrested  twice. Once was briefly as a teenager for petty theft, and the second was for robbery of a jewelry store. He’d only been arrested for the second one because his partner had given him up in exchange for a reduced sentence. From what she gathered, Egan was intelligent and a planner, but was smart enough not to become so inflexible that he would never alter his plans in the moment if things weren’t going his way.

His adaptability seemed to be an important trait of his. The files said that he had made connections and deals in prison where necessary. Generally he hadn’t been violent, but there had been two incidents in which he’d defended himself and the victims had been slashed, usually on or near the stomach. That last detail was what made Liz more certain than ever than Egan was the one that had ambushed her in the park.

Fueled by a new determination to find more information about him, she spent the rest of the afternoon digging through ViCap and other databases to see if his name cropped up. She soon learned that it seemed that, after he’d been released from prison, Egan had become even more adept at covering his tracks. The only times his name cropped up were in connection to assaults or robberies with no real suspect. Egan had been named along with a few others as a person of interest.

She started to give up when Red came back in. This time, she heard the steady falls of his footsteps against the floor.

“Well, I hope you had better luck than I did. Did you find anything?” She shut her laptop and turned her chair around to face him.

Liz expected him to perhaps have an irritated expression, maybe even a weary one, but she didn’t think she’d look up to see him looking so… _nervous_. If something had been able to shake him, she had reason to be concerned.

“Is…everything okay?” She started to reach for his hand, but he placed it in his pocket before she could.

Red slumped into his chair as if he was Atlas finally taking a break from holding the Earth aloft. “I will give you the run down of what I discovered. But before I do—”

He sighed, long and heavy. “Lizzie, I need to tell you something.”


	27. Chapter 27

There was no way for him to know how that sentence had immediately sent her heart pounding like it was a racehorse shooting out of the gate. As she stared, eyes fixed on his grave countenance, Liz’s mind flicked through all the myriad possibilities of what he needed to tell her. The Schneider/Morley investigation had been closed? Egan had already skipped town? Egan had been found dead?

“What is it?” She swallowed and flashed a smile at him, trying to remain encouraging.

His jacket strained against his chest as he inhaled and reached towards a stack of folders on his desk. He pulled out a slim folder from the bottom of the pile and held it in one hand, thumb pressed against it, jaw working as he stared down at it.

“Lizzie, do you remember that on the first week we were partnered that we…argued and you said that you’d been dealing with death since you were young?” Red pulled his eyes away from the folder and looked at her, the skin of his cheek immediately twitching when he did.

Without wanting to, her thumb went to the scar at her wrist, finger stroking back and forth across it. That heated volatility between them seemed so long ago, but the argument wasn’t an easy one to forget. “Yeah, what about it?”

Raising his free hand, he ran it over the back of his head. “I must confess that that detail made me want to understand what you were talking about, and I discovered articles online about the fire.”

The tip of her nail pressed into her wrist, sweat prickling at the back of her neck as he said “the fire”. Her memories of it almost didn’t seem real anymore—it was like remembering the distorted, flickering images of a horror movie that she’d once glimpsed as a child. That night was little more than scraps and fragments, impressions of screaming and heat on her arm, the skin on her wrist peeling and sloughing away. She hadn’t told him about that. She’d told hardly _anyone_ about that. The only people that she’d told was a very close friend from high school and Tom. Tom hadn’t known until she told him eight months into their marriage.

“How did you find that out? I didn’t tell you any specifics,” she said, and the words came out flat and cold.

“I looked into your personal files and saw that your biological parents were deceased. From your telling me you’d been dealing with death since you were young, it wasn’t hard to conclude that something must’ve happened to them. I realize that I was prying into your privacy and I should have left well enough alone, but—” he spread his hands over the file, eyebrows raised.

She yanked her hand away from her wrist. If she kept scratching and pressing at it, it was going to bleed, and she didn’t need even more scar tissue. As she inhaled, her throat burned. “And what’s in that?” She stabbed her finger at the file in his lap.

“Information about the fire and…the suspect that might have caused it.” He lifted the folder from his lap and dropped his eyes to the ground, the proffered folder held in the air like some kind of a peace offering.

Raising one hand into he air, she saw that it was trembling, the skin around the tips of her fingers white. The pit of her stomach had gone cold, and she could feel there was something already shutting off inside of her, like a generator slowly powering down, even if her body still reacted powerfully to the memory of the fire. Part of her wanted to yank the folder from his hand and make his skin tingle, because what right did he to go digging through old wounds, jabbing tender spots and making them hurt anew? What right did he have to keep secrets like this from her?

But she didn’t. Her limp hand pulled the folder from his grasp with the soft whisper of fingers against card stock. She flipped the folder open, and the first image that she saw was a photo of the wreckage of her childhood from a scanned image of an old newspaper. Her chest felt hollow, but her eyes stung. She was only able to flick through the first few pages—a parade of destruction, smoke smeared timber and floor, carpeting eaten away by the fire, the strange gas can…

She drew in a sharp, gasping breath that almost sounded like the precursor to a sob when she got to the photograph of herself, staring dead eyed into the camera. She slapped the folder shut and shoved it back at him, her hands pushing it into his abdomen. He clasped his hands over the folder and she pulled away before his hands could brush hers.

Liz sniffed, eyes glued to her hands pressed together in her lap. “How long have you been keeping this from me?” Her voice was quiet, almost detached from her, like she was listening to herself talk in a video and her voice sounded odd and alien to her ears.

“There are other things connected to the fire that I haven’t told you yet—”

She pressed her teeth together, molars scraping the inside of her cheek. “How. _Long_?”

She was a mountain ready to erupt, the pressure just barely held below the surface.

A rough exhale. “…Since the first week we met.”

Pressing her eyes closed, she dragged her chair as close to him as she could. Inside her, she could feel something trembling, ready to snap. But she wouldn’t let it. They were still on the clock, and they were in the middle of the homicide department sitting at their desk. To anyone walking by, she just wanted this to look like an important conversation about a case. This was between them. No one else.

She braced one hand on the arm of his chair, leaning in to him. “And why the _hell_ did you think you had any right to look into my past in the first place?” she hissed. “Don’t you think that if I wanted you to know, I would’ve told you? Don’t you think there’s, oh, I don’t know—maybe a good reason I didn’t tell you? Or anyone else for that matter? You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to keep secrets like this, especially when it’s not about something so personal to me.”

He turned his head to her, collar slipping so that she could see the fine hairs on the back of his neck were raised. His eyes slowly raised to hers, and she was so close to him his eyelashes nearly brushed her skin. She didn’t pull back.

“I didn’t look into this to hurt you, Lizzie,” he said, voice steady as it ever was. She didn’t like the placating tone he was using, like the voice he used when suspects or victims’ families were getting upset. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have looked into your past, but I only withheld this information for so long because I wanted to be certain some of the things I discovered were correct.”

That was when Liz leaned away with a disbelieving laugh. She fall back against her chair, arms crossed as she shook her head. “That’s what people always say, isn’t it? ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ ‘I’m so sorry about keeping secrets, please forgive me.’ You think that makes this right?”

She had _trusted_ him. Maybe to some people trust was a commodity easily given away—a plentiful resource in their personal economy. After Tom, Liz had found herself experiencing an extreme scarcity of trust. It was as if all her stores of it had almost entirely dried up. She could play at trust, or perhaps she could extend trust in professional, detached areas. She could trust that the Booking would probably process someone correctly, or that the lab would do their very best to send the results in when they could. She trusted that, when she was a uniformed officer, her fellow uniforms probably would support her.

But she’d never given her trust so wholly to someone. Not until now. Not until Red. If he had been anyone else, perhaps this betrayal would’ve been easier to stomach. She would’ve felt the same hurt, but not at the same intensity, not like she was taking a knife to the gut again. She’d trusted him more than just a partner. She’d let him start seeping into the cracks of her personal life, not knowing where the professional started and the personal ended.

He told her details of files over phone calls the past week, but he’d also soothed her to sleep with his voice during the selfsame call, and he’d taken it upon himself to care for her. He pushed her to be the best detective she was capable of being, and he’d defended his younger, more inexperienced partner against the likes of Decker and other dismissive detectives. Even now, in her rage, part of her couldn’t discount all of that.

Yet, all of that made it worse too. It wasn’t just a partner failing to disclose personal information. It was a partner, a friend, a confidant going behind her back and searching through the oldest, darkest alleys of her past, peeling back boards that she’d kept nailed up for decades. It was someone she...not _loved_ , exactly—it wasn’t love yet, anyway—but someone that she had deep feelings for keeping secrets and betraying her once again.

“Lizzie…” Red said, his voice distant, lost. Even now, some part of her wanted to reach out to him when she heard how forlorn his tone was, but the burn of her anger scorched out the sympathy.

“Stop. I don’t want to hear anymore excuses. Just…” Liz hauled herself out of her seat and turned her back on him, tipping her head to the ceiling. She rocked back on her heels. “Leave whatever details you found about Egan on the desk as a report. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. He was still holding the damning file to his chest as if it would somehow shield himself from her accusations. His lips were tight as he stared at her, but eventually he nodded in confirmation to her request. When he did, she turned her head away from him and rushed away from the desk, arms crossed over her chest. She couldn’t be around anyone else right now. She needed to be somewhere no one would try to talk to her about forensics or canvasing or anything else. What she needed was darkness and isolation.

That’s why she soon found herself standing in the corner of the cold case file storage room, the boxes and boxes of ghosts towering up around her, each cardboard box filled with the forgotten, those who had never seen any sort of justice. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, like she could jam the hot tears back into her eyes, but she could stop them this time. The tears coated her cheeks and hands, the salt of the tears staining the bandage on her wounded hand, stinging the healing slice in her palm. She sucked in a breath between her teeth, ragged and harsh, scraping the back of her throat.

She pulled her hands away from her face and turned to one of the shelves, leaning her forehead against on of the boxes, eyes drifting closed. Maybe what she really needed wasn’t to be alone. Maybe what she needed was for someone to comfort her and tell her that things weren’t as bad as they seemed and remind her that she’d weathered worse than this. But the one person that she would’ve sought that comfort from was the source of her pain.

Her chest heaved in a sob and she turned away from the boxes, pressing herself back into the cool, chill brick wall.

* * *

That night, her phone buzzed once with a call from him. It was entirely possible that the call was about the case and nothing more, but Liz just let it vibrate in her palm as she looked down at the name “Red” lighting up the screen. The screen blinked black once the call failed to be picked up until, forty-five seconds later, the screen flickered alive again to say she had a new voice mail.

She switched her phone onto silent for the rest of the night.

The TV murmured in the background as she sat on the floor with information about Egan spread across her lap, the report Red had left on the desk that afternoon sitting next to her leg. It was a page long, but the short of his report was that he hadn’t found anything about where Egan might be staying, except that Egan had crashed on the couch of a friend two years ago.

She worked late, the words spinning and mingling together into nonsensical scratches until she became so weary that she had to listen to her body’s complaints and drag herself to bed.

Out of habit, she checked her phone as she slumped onto her bed, and pulled her hair out of a ponytail.

Four calls. Three voice mails.

All from Red.

She lay the her phone on the nightstand and switched the lamp off.


	28. Chapter 28

“Through my research, it looks like Egan might have some connections to some men that Gatlin Stroud associated with.” Liz nudged copies of the research over to Red, her eyes glued onto the small print on the papers.

It would be inevitable that they would have to address what happened yesterday eventually, but she had no stomach for it now, and besides, the important thing wasn’t her feelings of betrayal. It was _finally_ wrapping up the Schneider/Morley case, and perhaps closing her own attempted murder. It _would_ be a nice bonus to know that her would-be killer was no longer skulking around the streets.

Red didn’t pick up the files, his eyes just flicked up from the screen of his laptop to look at her. His jaw was still as tight as it had been yesterday before she’d left for the cold case storage room.

“You think that Stroud might’ve hired Egan to off you because you were investigating Beck’s murder?” He started reached for the papers. Maybe he was going to go along with the little charade that nothing was wrong—at least for today. If he did, she would be immensely grateful.

She sighed, lifting her shoulders in a lazy shrug. “I don’t know. The connection is only tentative. The two other men connected to Stroud seemed to be involved in arms trafficking, and it was rumored that they used Egan to threaten or scare off anyone that started getting too close or trying to edge into their territory.”

If Stroud had told Egan to try to kill her, that seemed like a risky and potentially stupid move. Killing a cop would get an unbelievable amount of eyes on Egan—but perhaps that’s what Stroud had wanted. Get the minds of the homicide department off of the murder of Beck and onto the brutal stabbing of one of their own. Maybe he’d promised Egan a big payout or a fake identity and transportation out of the country if he got the job done. But she doubted that now that Egan had failed to carry out his mission Stroud would offer any kind of help.

Red flicked through the papers with pursed lips, skimming the information and nodding to himself, apparently absorbing what was there. “This seems like a good lead to follow, but we also need to check up again with that friend of Egan’s, whom I assume you read about in my report.”

The report was the only allusion either of them had made so far to the consequences coming from his confession yesterday. Though she enjoyed not going through the emotional fall out of it all, it felt strange toeing around the issue that both of them were still probably thinking about. But if toeing around it was what it would take to see this case through to the end, then so be it. The issue of his betrayal could wait until they were done.

Perhaps things could operate professionally—if tensely—until then. And perhaps that’s how it should’ve operated from the beginning. Maybe it had been wrong to let both Red and herself get involved so deeply in each other’s lives.

She sucked on her bottom lip and nodded. “Okay, let’s go check him out. Do you have an address for this guy?”

“Yes,” he said, the word clipped. “I already talked to him yesterday, but I suspect he knows a bit more than he told me yesterday. Perhaps you can be persuasive.”

Red shrugged and stood, turning away from her to pull his jacket off of the back of his chair. He was trying to seem relaxed and nonchalant as he usually was, but as he pulled the jacket on, his unhappiness bled through—in the way he yanked the sleeves over his arms and the way the jacket was taut over his tense shoulders.

For a moment, her resolve broke. “Red—”

He turned his shoulder and glanced at her, mouth twitching. “Let’s talk to the friend, Elizabeth.”

* * *

The man barely opened the door for them. He only held it open a sliver with his fingers curled around the edge of the door, peering out with nervous, narrowed eyes, like a mouse afraid to leave its burrow lest a hawk snatch it up. The gray T-shirt he wore blended into the murky darkness of his home, almost making it seem like he was a ghostly face peeking out at them.

“I’m Detective Reddington. I assume that you haven’t managed to forget me in the short span of time since we last spoke, Mr. Zabik,” he said, his hands folded in front of him.

Zabik’s cheek was pressed against the door. “Sure, I remember you. But who is she?” He pointed a short, uneven fingernail at Liz.

Red’s eyes slid to her, and he looked her over with a vague indifference. Perhaps it was just for show, but the lack of emotion in that glance struck something inside her. If he was trying to pettily get back at her for their argument from yesterday, she wasn’t going to react. She had every right to be angry at him, and he had to know that.

“Oh, _her_?” he canted his head towards her. “She’s my partner. I wouldn’t be particularly worried about her, unless you’ve got something to hide. She doesn’t take kindly to secrets, Kurt.”

It took all of her willpower to keep her face neutral and not shoot a glare in his direction. Let him make snide remarks if he wanted. She was going to do her job.

Zabik’s blue—almost white—eyes flashed to her and then he flinched and dropped his gaze, as if by making eye contact he had allowed her to read his mind.

“My name is Detective Elizabeth Keen. Can we come inside?” She started trying to peer around him, but Zabik shifted and closed the door an inch more.

“I told Reddington everything I knew. The last time I saw Egan was two years ago, okay? We weren’t even that close. I only let him stay here because I was afraid of what might happen if I didn’t let him stay,” Zabik said, his voice reedy and trembling. The tips of his fingers went white as he clutched harder onto the door.

“Is that why you don’t want to talk about him? Because you’re afraid?” Liz almost tried to catch her eyes, but she stopped herself. Zabik was like a scared dog, and making eye contact with him seemed to make him feel threatened.

Zabik jerked one shoulder up, nostrils flaring as he exhaled. “Egan is the kind of person you want to think well of you or to think neutrally of you.”

“If you’re worried about him retaliating if you tell us something, we can protect you. We’re serious about keeping our sources anonymous and safe,” she said, voice soft, placating.

“Come on, Kurt. You already talked to me about Egan, and if you think he’ll find out about this little meeting, then he probably knows about the other one, doesn’t he? If you’re dead, you’re dead. May as well spill your guts, right? Besides, confession is good for the soul,” Red said, and shoved his hands into his pockets, raising his arms in a shrug. “Or at least so I’ve been told. I’ve never much been one for confessing my sins. I like them _far_ too much to feel penitent about them.”

She didn’t know if he was still alluding to yesterday’s confession, or if he was just breezily rambling as he usually did. It was possible that yesterday’s incident was so fresh in her mind that she was attributing everything he said as a reference to it but the references were all in her head. But he did like being smug and sarcastic too, didn’t he?

For some reason, Red’s logic seemed to break through to Zabik, because he started pulling the door open, eyes occasionally flicking up and down to only get quick flashes of the two of them as they started for the entrance of the house. “Yeah, fine. I guess I’ve got nothing else to lose,” Zabik said, rubbing the back of his neck as he walked through the entry way and into the kitchen.

There was a thin film of dust on the kitchen window, turning the sunlight filthy and slimy, coating the room and making it look like a frame of damaged film. A pile of dishes sat stacked up in the sink, and the faucet dripped, drumming out a quiet rhythm against a spoon laying face up on one of the plates. Liz had a tendency to be messy, but her messes spoke of lists and priorities, shoving laundry and vacuuming down to the bottom of the list because her life was filled with more important things. This mess seemed to speak of despondency and bleakness.

As Zabik sat down in a chair at the circular table, one leg whined. He ran a hand over his forehead, flopping his other hand in the direction of the other chairs. She pulled one of them out and angled her body away from Red. The other chair groaned as he sat in it. She folded her hands on the table and did not turn to him.

Zabik glanced between them.

The water drummed out, _plop plop plop_.

“…Well?” She waved her hand in the air at him.

Zabik blew out his cheeks, and with his thin face and sharp cheekbones, it made him look like an emaciated puffer fish. “What do you want to know?”

“Oh, I’d like to know the answer to so _many_ things. Such as—why do headphones manage to get all tangled into tiny knots in your pocket? What is the explanation for that business in the Bermuda triangle? Why do people still like Immanuel Kant so much?” Red rolled his eyes. “But what we’re asking is whether you have been in contact with Egan since he slept on your dingy little couch two years ago.”

She didn’t have any patience for his playful jabs at Zabik. They needed to get any possible information and leave the minute they got it—no lingering, no little bantering. Just in and out. Straightforward.

“Let’s start somewhere less broad than what Reddington just suggested. Tell me this: do you know any other addresses he stayed at?” She started removing her notebook from her pocket and pulled out a pen. This time she hadn’t forgotten it.

Zabik’s head bobbed and he scratched at his chest, pulling the T-shirt down a bit. “Yeah, I know of two or three other places I know he’s stayed at,” he mumbled.

Liz tore off a piece of paper and tossed it into the middle of the table. Zabik blinked his round eyes at it as if he had no idea where it had just come from, and after a moment, the pen followed it when she tossed it onto the table. It rolled forward, pushing the paper closer to him.

“If you know them, then write them down,” she said, turning sideways in the chair and crossing her legs. It seemed that Zabik was easily bullied, so taking an assertive attitude with him seemed both in his and her best interests.

He dropped his hands into his lap and his eyes lifted up to her, catching her gaze for the first time she’d been talking to him. “I didn’t specifically say I knew the addresses, did I? I just said I knew some places.”

She snorted hard. “Come on, Mr. Zabik. What’s the point in playing this game? We both know you know more than you’re letting on. Either you give us the information easily now, or we find an excuse to pick through your life and get what we need. It’s your choice, but I think you’ll ultimately end up liking option one a lot better.”

Zabik jabbed his finger into the middle of the paper as if it was a dart smacking into the middle of the target, his eyes hard. She could almost believe she could hear his teeth grinding. Perhaps she’d miscalculated in thinking that an assertive tack was the best strategy to take. She was right when she’d thought he was like a frightened dog—and when frightened dogs were jabbed at and backed into a corner, sometimes they snapped and bit instead of cowering.

“You think you can push me around just because you’ve got a badge, right? I don’t care if Egan dropped a body on you and you’ve gotta clean up after his mess, I’m not talking if you’re going to act like I’m nothing.” He shoved the paper and pen back over to her, almost making the pen fall right into her lap.

The pressure was starting to build up behind her eyes, like the red line of a thermometer gradually rising as heat pressed against it. She knew she needed to ignore the mounting heat inside of her, but part of her wanted to bang her hand on the table and say he was nothing, he was just an insignificant part of this hellish investigation that never seemed to end. His leads might not even give them anything, and he would’ve wasted her time for nothing.

Instead, she just inhaled and turned her body towards him, a serene smile twitching at her lips. “Mr. Zabik, I didn’t mean—”

“Hey, I know you don’t I?” Something flickered in his liquid eyes—a sense of recognition and something slotting into place.

The smile stayed, but her stomach started twisting. Her attack must’ve been on the news at some point. Was that what he was talking about? “I don’t think so. We’ve never spoken before.”

“Kurt, I think it’s best if you don’t pursue this line of thought any further,” Red interjected, holding up a hand of warning.

Zabik tapped his index finger on the middle of the table, providing an echoing beat to the steady plop, plop of the faucet. “No, no, I’ve seen you on the news. You were that cop that almost got knifed to death in the park. You think that was Egan, don’t you?”

His lip curled up as he glanced down at the bandage still wrapped around her hand. One finger twitched, but she left her hand exposed where it was. If he knew who she was, then he knew. There was no reason to hide it. Her lips pulled back to expose her teeth in a grimacing smile to him.

“I am not at liberty to tell you one way or the other,” she said, voice a sheet of ice.

“Egan always likes to try to go for the gut.” Egan’s eyes flickered to her torso. “Is that what he tried with you? Slice you open like a—”

She didn’t know what it was or what snapped, but she shoved the table so it slammed into Egan’s belly, knocking the words back into his throat. In a moment, she found herself standing with no clear memory of what she had done or why, breathing hard as if she was a winded animal. She tried to jerk away when Red wrapped a hand around her wrist, but the circle of his hand was hard and strong against hers—refined through years of grabbing unruly criminals and suspects and holding firm so they couldn’t twist from his grip like a fish.

“Elizabeth, you need to wait outside while I finish this conversation,” he whispered in her ear, all but growling at her.

Her eyes strained as she tried to look at him without turning her head. “No. I can handle this,” she whispered back, but even as she spoke the words, she knew it was a lie.

“No, you cannot. Not right now. You are heated and you are in no state of mind to continue questioning this man who is deliberately provoking you. If you keep talking to him, you are going to jeopardize whatever information we might get from him. As someone who--”

She coughed a laugh and shifted in his grip, callouses on his hands scraping over her wrist. “What, as ‘someone is the senior officer’ you’re going to order me outside?”

His eyes narrowed at her, and his fingers twitched against her skin. “I was going to say, ‘As someone who cares about you and this investigation’, you need to leave. But if my seniority in this situation is going to get you out, I will not hesitate to pull that card if you force me to.”

With a tug of her hand, she tried to test him and see if his hold on her had loosened any. It hadn’t. His clamp on her was strong as it ever was. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll wait outside in the car.”

With a nod, he dropped his eyes and released her wrist.

* * *

Her eyes were on the opposite window when Red sat down in the driver’s seat, papers rustling, seat belt clicking and sliding into place. She hoped that he wouldn’t mention the incident with the table, but if he left it alone, the unsaid would gradually build between them, built by bricks of denial. That wasn’t what healthy partnerships were made of.

But that didn’t mean Liz was going to broach the subject now, not when her nerves were clearly so raw. And she didn’t want to admit her shame at losing her temper, because if she did, it meant admitting he was right about something today, and she didn’t want to give him that. She wanted to hold onto her resentment at his keeping secrets, even if it meant burning herself in the process.

Once they’d pulled away from Zabik’s home, she flicked her eyes over at him. Red turned his head so that the dark green of his gaze was only visible to her in the rear view mirror.

“I know that a lot of things have happened to you recently and you are not in a good mental state, but you must control your temper,” he said.

It seemed like they were back to day one of their partnership—him lecturing her about her inexperience. “It’s not like you usually play nice half the time, and you were pressing his buttons too. I don’t have to play the kind, patient cop all the time.”

“I only press buttons when I think it will get me something. You don’t blindly jab at them without calculation, and you must learn how hard to push. Push too hard and the button sticks or breaks,” he said, directing them out of Zabik’s dingy neighborhood and maneuvering around a plastic garbage can that had rolled into the middle of the street.

She pressed her lips together. “Am I going to get in trouble for this?”

Worrying over the ethics of the incident was probably what she should’ve been doing, but considering the consequences of pushing a table against a man they were interviewing was weightier. She didn’t need something else on her plate.

“No. Once I talked Zabik down he was willing not to go blathering about it. And…” his head turned a fraction of an inch towards her, “I wouldn’t report on you to Cooper.”

She scoffed. “Why, because you’re loyal?”

He tilted his chin and turned from her so she couldn’t even see his eyes from the side or in the rear view mirror. “Yes.”

She was about to accuse him of the hypocrisy of that statement when she heard him take a breath that seemed to be caught in his throat for a moment, lodged like a piece of hard bread.

“We all have reasons to keep secrets, Lizzie. Some of them are about ourselves and not just about other people,” he said, voice rough, hands tight on the steering wheel.

Sometimes he spoke indirectly, making her puzzle out the real meanings of words. From what she’d seen, it seemed to be both some kind of defense mechanism and natural inclination. She picked apart the words in her mind like a creature to be dissected. Was he referring to Zabik’s evasive attitude? Did he mean that the fire from her childhood was somehow connected to him, even in an indirect way?

“Are you saying you had some personal reason to hide the fact you were poking around into my past?” she asked, her voice a whisper.

He smiled faintly. “By the way, Zabik gave me a few addresses. I think we’ll want to look into them tomorrow.”

With that, she knew the matter was closed, and another brick was slotted into the wall.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys! So, I know it's been over a month between chapter updates, but life happened, and I got a pretty bad case of writer's block. But I'm back with a new (and long) chapter! Hopefully it's okay.

He dropped his head into his hands as he screwed his eyes shut, putting the empty glass of scotch down on his sofa cushion next to him. Red should’ve told her sooner—perhaps right at the beginning when she still didn’t like him much. It would’ve been the correct, right thing to do, because Lizzie’s anger at him was justified. He wouldn’t have liked it if she started prying around into what had caused the dissolution of his marriage. His divorce and the fire of her childhood were both old, deep wounds that were still sore when prodded at, and he hated how much his confession seemed to be hurting her.

That’s how it always seemed to go for him—inadvertently hurting the people he loved because of his arrogance. And it hadn’t been arrogance, hadn’t it? Thinking that he was doing the right thing keeping it from her, researching the fire behind her back, making excuses to himself that he would tell her about it once he had enough information. But it hadn’t just been arrogance, it had been selfishness. He’d wanted so badly for there to be a resolution to the arsonist case he’d never been able to solve, and some sense of justice and vengeance towards the unknown man that had taken so many lives and had scarred Red’s own body.

Had he been using her pain and trauma in order to cleanse himself of his own failures? He reached for the bottle of scotch on the coffee table and poured another helping into the glass next to him. He knocked back the drink almost immediately and curled his lip, grimacing. If he’d just told her about the potential connection to the ‘78 fire and his arsonist case right at the beginning, it wouldn’t have made a difference. She still would’ve disliked him all the same, but instead he’d chosen to tell her after she’d trusted him and counted him as some sort of a friend.

He pressed a hand to his forehead. Well, _that_ was just another selfish thought, wasn’t it? He should’ve told her because it was the right thing to do, not because it hurt whatever relationship they had. Not that there had been a relationship of… _that_ sort, even if it was what he yearned for.

He rolled the glass between his hands, the chill surface raising the hairs along his arms.

He really _was_ a bastard, wasn’t he?

He was about to pick up the bottle of scotch again when something bumped against his knuckles. Glancing down, he saw Ernest staring up at him with wide, green eyes, tail flicking back and forth with impatience. He shoved his face against Red’s hand again while giving a long, drawn out meow.

Sometimes Ernest pretended he was hungry when he really wasn’t, and Red would feed him despite knowing that. Who was he to deny his cat a few extra treats? But this time Ernest wasn’t lying. Red had just gone straight for the alcohol without remembering to feed him.

Not only was he a rather terrible partner to Lizzie, it also seemed he was an incompetent cat owner, which had to be a whole new level of pathetic. Red ran his hands along his knees and stood, setting the bottle back down on the table with a clink, Ernest beginning to vibrate with a coaxing purr as he jumped down from the couch and sped towards his food dish, claws clicking on the wooden kitchen floor. The cat brushed against his legs as he rummaged for the cat food, his eyes narrowed as he peered up into the cupboard.

His hand rested on the bag of cat food for a moment. Ernest meowed again beneath him, whining and plaintive.

No, it wasn’t that his forgetting to feed Ernest was a new kind of pathetic. It was just a small, ridiculous manifestation of the pitiful state his life had eventually settled into after years of bad decisions and failures. He just shook his head and poured the food into the bowl, the dry pieces clattering against metal.

* * *

Red looked terrible.

Liz knew he wasn’t exactly a champion at sleeping, but from what he’d told her, he had adjusted to living with a less than desirable sleep schedule. But this morning, he seemed to be hunched in on himself, making him seem smaller and weaker than he really was, and his mouth was tense, jaw held tight.

But the most obvious thing was his bloodshot eyes, which in someone else she might have taken for simple sleeplessness, but she knew Red liked his drink. It was more than likely last night he’d fallen into a dark mood and had indulged in alcohol more than he should’ve. She realized that she was observing his state in a detached manner, like she was just analyzing a suspect’s demeanor in order to break him or get the information she wanted. But even in her numb, analytical state, seeing something this way pricked something still soft inside her. To most people, he rarely gave flickering glimpses of his true emotions beneath his normally strong facade. The fact that his composure was fracturing and cracking meant that what he’d done to her was affecting him just as much as it was her.

Maybe if she’d still been in the throes of rage, she’d have felt some twisted sense of satisfaction that the guilt was chewing at his guts, but she just felt…exhausted. Exhausted of this case, of all her childhood emotions being hauled to the surface, and of watching both of them rip at the seams with no idea of how to fix it.

She glanced away from him and ran her lower teeth against her upper lip. “So…” she began, “today we’re gonna check out the addresses Zabik gave you?”

There was only a second or two of delay in his response, his distant eyes trained on his computer screen until they drifted up to her and met her eyes, finally recognizing her statement. It wasn’t the kind of deliberate lag he sometimes used. “Yes. I think we should be getting on that as soon as possible. I was simply considering the most efficient routes to take to the addresses that we must visit and the strategy we should use while talking to the individuals that we encounter.”

At least he was letting her in on his game. “And what strategy would that be?”

“Well,” he turned the chair towards her and raised a hand, “I suggest we alternate between who speaks first, and we both act understanding of the people we meet. This is delicate, and scaring off people that know anything about Egan would be a disaster.”

“I sense a ‘however’, coming,” she said, leaning her weight on the arm of her chair.

He exhaled in a mirthless laugh. “Astute as usual, Lizzie. Yes—the _however_ comes when and if any witnesses or associates start trying to stonewall us. If that happens, well, then we return to the tried and true method of me playing the insufferable one and you playing the more reasonable, levelheaded one.”

“We tried that with Zabik. It didn’t exactly work well.” That was putting things quite mildly. She’d almost completely cost them a valuable lead with her outburst.

With the twitch of his mouth, his expression softened a bit, like he knew exactly what she was thinking of. He probably _did_ know. As fractured as their partnership had become, they still knew each other better than anyone else, knew the shape and flow of each other’s moods and thoughts. “That’s true, but I doubt most individuals we talk to will know the exact way to wind you up. If we encounter someone that neither method works on, then we feel the situation out, just as we’ve done before.”

He pushed himself up from his chair in one motion, reaching for his jacket. “We’re adaptable creatures, you and I. We can capably handle whatever cards life tosses at us.”

She pressed her lips together and stood from her chair, retrieving her own coat. She wanted to believe that she was an adaptable, flexible creature, adept at fitting into a new situation when the moment required it. And when she was working a case, that was true. Thinking on her feet was something she’d become well acquainted with, but it seemed questionable whether she’d become adaptable in her personal life. Since the divorce, she’d tried to adapt, and she’d told herself that’s what she’d been doing.

But adaptation implied flourishing in a new situation.

And when was the last time she’d ever fully flourished?

* * *

She didn’t know how much more patience she had left for talking to more former acquaintances of Egan. Liz had been so hopeful that his former cellmate would’ve been some use, but the man had barely stayed in contact with him after they were both on the outside. The cellmate, Jevons, hadn’t be particularly threatening individual, so Egan had protected him in prison at the cost of making Jevons promise to do a favor for him after they got out. Typically, that favor consisted of letting Egan stay with him whenever he wanted, or using his forgery skills when Egan needed it.

But Jevons never kept in touch with him on purpose. Like Zabik, Jevons had been frightened of him and only did what he wanted to avoid deadly consequences. The only good her conversation with Jevons did was to further cement her knowledge of Egan’s personality and behavioral patterns, but that didn’t get them any closer to finding where he might be staying.

Somehow, the other three former acquaintances had been even less helpful. They hadn’t heard from Egan in years. The last acquaintance on the list was a man named Leonard Fenwick—another former ex-con who had been in the same prison as Egan. Since the cellmate had been of little help, she didn’t expect Fenwick could shed much more light on where Egan might have been staying recently.

Liz swept her hand through her hair, leaned back on her heels, and glanced over at Red. “Your turn to start off,” she said.

That thick tension was still between them, but it was at least manageable if they followed some kind of a pattern with their questioning. Following a series of steps was rational, non-emotional. At least while they were out, she could have a reprieve from the way they were drifting apart.

He gave her a short, sharp nod and rapped on the apartment door. From behind the door, there was a muffled shout of, “ _Coming_!”

When Fenwick opened the door, they were greeted by the narrow face of a middle aged man with wire frame glasses perched on the end of his nose, eyes flicking so fast between the two of them she thought he might get dizzy. His graying hair was disheveled, like he’d been furiously running his hands through it before he’d answered the door.

Just a week ago, she would’ve teased Red later that he’d finally met one of his peers—and would’ve made a jab about how Fenwick was his age and still had a mane of hair—but now? She had to keep the thought to herself, another pricking reminder wedging itself further into her heart, telling her that their closeness had disintegrated to the point that she could no longer comfortably trade good natured barbs with him.

“Mr. Fenwick, I’m Detective Raymond Reddington, and this is Detective Elizabeth Keen. May we have a moment of your time to speak with you about Sanford Egan?” Red flashed his badge and put it away in one quick movement. He wasn’t rushed, but he was trying to do everything with quick efficiency today, not even any sarcastic remarks directed at her like there had been yesterday. Stiff professionalism was somehow worse than resentment and hurt.

Fenwick glanced over his shoulder, raising a hand to smooth his hair, but only further mussing it. “Oh—well, sure, I suppose so, but everything is terribly messy right now.”

“I don’t think that’ll affect our discussion,” Red said, smiling, starting to take a step forward.

Fenwick leaned back as Red started to invade his space. “All right. Come on in, then. Do you two want anything to drink? Coffee? Water?”

Liz shook her head, following behind Red. “No, I’m good, but thanks.”

To her surprise, Red did not take Fenwick up on his offer. It was almost second nature to him to sample any free food or drink regardless of whether or not it ended up being awful. She didn’t know if that spoke to his mental state or the fact that he was trying to keep this visit as to the point as possible.

As she followed Fenwick into the apartment’s living room, she saw that things were a mess. Across the coffee table and along the floor, there were electronic wires and bits strewn about. A typewriter sat on the coffee table, wires poking out of the top of it, trailing across the top of the table like exposed innards. A black, blank computer screen lay next to it, in a similar state of ruin.

Fenwick pushed his hands into his pockets, looking down at the mechanical mess. “This is a side job of sorts. I take old typewriters and turn them into keyboards for computers, then I sell the final product online. It’s more successful than you’d think. People like the retro look of it, and find my craftsmanship to be splendid.”

Red bent down in front of the coffee table, his natural draw to the offbeat apparently piqued by Fenwick’s Frankensteinian creation. At least that was one thing that seemed unaffected by his earlier, subdued mood. “I’d ask some kind of a question about this, but I’ve not a clue about electronics and…” he waved a hand over the typewriter, “this kind of thing. But as a piece of art, I can appreciate it very much.”

A smile ghosted across Fenwick’s face. “Thanks. I know a few of my satisfied customers bought them just to have as a decoration rather than as a functional computer.”

She almost didn’t want to interrupt the conversation. Even with the rift between her and Red, she knew it would hurt her to see his face fall back into a mask of professionalism when she redirected them back to the subject at hand. But neither of their feelings mattered at the moment. She had a job that needed to be done.

Liz cleared her throat and sat down on the couch, pushing aside several wires. “Mr. Fenwick, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’re in a rush today, so can we ask you some questions?” she said. It was a lie, and Red would know that. Fenwick was the last address they had to visit, but she needed to press him to get what she wanted.

Red glanced at her over his shoulder, mouth pinched at the edge as that mask fell into place. She didn’t pull her gaze away. If they were going to keep working together—even if it was only for the remainder of this case--, she had to get used to this. Fenwick nodded and pushed up his glasses, sitting down on the unoccupied edge of the coffee table as Red made his way to the other end of the couch.

“Mr. Fenwick, were you and Egan close?” She pulled out her notebook, tapping the end of it on the paper.

Fenwick pointed a finger at the tapping pen. “Do you have to do that?”

The end of her pen paused on the edge of the notebook. She opened her mouth, then closed it. “No. Sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you.”

Fenwick scratched at his temple, then shifted and crossed his arms, apparently discomfited by her brief, rapid tapping. “I just don’t like any kinds of distractions when I think. But to answer your question—no. I was acquainted with him, but we weren’t friends.”

Red huffed, settling back against the couch. “Seems like there’s a lot of that going around lately.”

Her spine stiffened. What was he doing? Was he trying to annoy Fenwick? If a tapping pen had irritated and distracted him, then rude comments didn’t seem like the best plan of attack. Fenwick seemed like a somewhat proud man, what with the self consciousness of the state of his apartment and the comments about the quality of his typewriter-computers. Placation seemed better than patronization.

“Well, regardless of your lack of closeness with him, might you be able to tell us anything about his recent movements? Maybe…recent crimes? Recent places he’s lived?” She smiled at Fenwick, pen still and unmoving on her notebook.

Fenwick jerked his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t make it a habit to keep track of former prison associates, and I’m not in the criminal business myself anymore. Besides, Egan is someone you want to stay away from.”

“Hmmm,” Red said, the noise like a soft growl in his throat, arms crossed tight across his chest.

Fenwick’s head turned to him. “What? You don’t believe that I’ve become legitimate?”

Red raised his eyebrows and gave a bright smile. “Oh, no, that’s not it at all! Clearly you’ve worked hard to move on from your days as a burglar,” he nodded at Fenwick’s project on the coffee table, “but it’s just that…”

He scratched at the back of his neck, lips pinched together like he was hesitating on whether he should divulge what he was thinking. “Well, you seem like a conscientious man with an eye for detail. Given what other acquaintances have said about Egan unexpectedly dropping by for little extralegal favors and veiled threats, I simply find it curious that you wouldn’t have kept track of his movements in case he decided to grace your doorstep with his presence.”

Fenwick shifted again, licking his lips and lowering a hand to pick up one of the wires off the coffee table. He pinched it between his fingers, bringing it up close to his face. “Yes, well, that’s not a bad idea, Detective. Perhaps I’ll consider it.”

Liz’s hands tightened around the notebook. She had caught on to what Red was trying to do—he, too, had picked up on Fenwick’s fussy, somewhat proud nature, and was trying to lure him into admitting information about Egan out of a sense of pride. It was a smart, subtler tactic than the one she’d taken. She wished she’d seen it, and part of her resented Red for being right. _Again_.

But this questioning session was not a competition, and they at least had to somewhat work together in order to get what they needed, so she was going to follow his lead.

“Are you sure that Egan might not have visited you before? Maybe he was in disguise. I wouldn’t blame you for not being able to recognize him if that was the case,” she said, giving him a syrupy smile. She didn’t know if that comment was condescending enough, but perhaps it would be enough to get him to stop dodging all of their questions.

Fenwick’s eyes narrowed, if only a little. “You don’t think I’d know him if I saw him?”

She dropped the notebook into her lap and held up her hands. “All I’m saying is that eyewitnesses can miss certain details in a crime, so it wouldn’t at all be shameful if you hadn’t recognized Egan when he came snooping around. It’s human nature.”

“Maybe some witnesses miss details, but I wouldn’t. As Detective Reddington said, I make it a habit of being attentive. It’s one of the few things from my old career that does me some good,” Fenwick said, voice firm.

He still wasn’t giving them anything except statements that made himself look good. They could press harder, but she had a feeling that would make him clam up even more and just claim he wanted to speak to his lawyer. No, it was time yank away the chance to fully prove his competence.

Liz tucked her notebook away into the inside of her jacket and started to stand, sighing and jamming her hands into her pockets with slumped shoulders. “Well, thank you for your time. It’s too bad you couldn’t give us anything.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw Red watching her, hands in his lap, eyes watching her every move, alert and ready to jump in if she started flailing. He was there for her if she needed it even now, she thought.

Fenwick’s shoulders loosened and he blinked, glasses starting to slip down his nose again. “You don’t have anymore questions?”

She blinked like the question surprised her. “Well…no. I mean, you reiterated several times that you haven’t seen Egan since prison, so I’m not gonna patronize you and waste your time, especially since you have your typewriter project to get back to.”

Red stood and hovered by the coffee table for a moment, head tilted as he surveyed the dismembered computer and typewriter. “You know, I might want one of these someday,” he said.

She ignored his comment and felt around in her pocket until her fingers brushed against a stray piece of paper. She pulled it out and scribbled her name and number on it with the pen, then extended it to Fenwick. “Here’s my number in case you do remember something, or if Egan comes by later.”

Fenwick took the paper between limp fingers, still seeming to be in half-disbelief that they were leaving already. “Thank you,” he said, subdued.

She began walking away, Red’s heavier footsteps following after her after a few seconds of delay, probably caused by his distraction over the typewriter-computer. He wouldn’t have known what to do with one anyway, given the befuddled look he occasionally gave the newest technology. 

Fenwick didn’t follow after them, so Red shut the door behind the two of them as they headed away, the outline of her notebook in the inside pocket of her jacket bumping against her side as she walked.

“That was the right move back there,” Red said, not seeming to be content to walk in silence.

She didn’t look over at him. “I thought it might be, but it was a gamble. We’ll see if the idea of us thinking he’s not as smart as he really is starts eating him up and he contacts me.”

He didn’t respond to that, but she didn’t expect him to. The silences between them had become more and more common over the course of yesterday and today. It was odd—she expected him to fill the tension between them with babble to distract himself, but he didn’t. He’d stayed quiet, particularly when he could tell her hackles were starting to rise.

Once they got to the apartment’s stairwell, just before she took the first step, Red’s hand brushed against her elbow. At first, she didn’t turn, just stared down into the winding, worn stairs that lead down into darkness.

“Lizzie,” he said.

For a moment, it was like they were in a fairy tale, and that name held some power over her, making her helpless to do anything but to turn and listen to what he wanted to stay. She turned to look at him, her hand still on the stair railing.

“Yeah?” She stared at him, keeping her face blank.

“When this investigation is over…” he glanced down and worked his mouth, “if you wish to talk to Cooper in order to be assigned a different partner, I understand. More than understand, actually.”

He shook his head and chuckled, like there was some joke only he understood. But soon, his face fell again, and his eyes raised to hers, full of sincerity and pain. “I have no wish to hinder your career, Lizzie. If being my partner is only going to result in drudgery and misery, then I will fully support your decision to be assigned to someone else. I won’t resent you, and I won’t try to stop you. I only want you—” his voice cracked at that, and he glanced away.

Liz dropped her gaze back to the pit of the stairwell, unable to maintain eye contact any longer either. Her throat was growing tight and her heart was beating hard against her ribs.

He cleared his throat. “…I only want you to be happy and successful in your career, and if that means no longer being my partner, then so be it.”

She wrapped her fist so tight around the railing she thought it might crack. “Red, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said, voice small, echoing into the emptiness of the stairwell, bouncing the quiet, hopeless admittance back to her.

She stepped back and looked over her shoulder at him. His expression was soft, and unless she had imagined it—or unless her own stinging eyes created the illusion of it—she thought his eyes were wet.

“You’ll know, Lizzie. You always figure things out.”

She swallowed, throat knotting harder. She should’ve been angry at him for saying these things. If it hadn’t been for his decision to keep secrets, they wouldn’t even be having this discussion. They would’ve been as close as they had been before—maybe even closer. But because of him, they were standing at the edge of an abyss, trying to keep both of themselves from crying. 

It was his doing.

But she couldn’t find the anger within herself. Any spark of it had twinkled out, dying down to embers inside her chest days before. All that was left was the utter exhaustion that had only increased since the morning. She wanted to fix this. She wanted to go back to how things had been before.

But she didn’t know what she was going to do.


	30. Chapter 30

The call came sooner than she expected.

She had just been typing at her computer, filling out paperwork when her phone started to vibrate across the desk, sliding across papers with each buzz. She’d hoped that it was Fenwick, but she had no realistic belief that it would be. If he was going to call, she would’ve expected it the next day after he’d had more time to stew, the details of their visit marinating in his mind. So when she grabbed the phone and saw a number she didn’t recognize, she almost didn’t answer it. She had paperwork to do, after all. If the caller really wanted to talk to her, they could leave a voice mail. But it would be idiotic to ignore it in case it did end up being Fenwick, so she picked up anyway.

“This is Elizabeth,” she said, voice bright and professional, fingers paused on her keyboard as she pressed the phone between her cheek and her ear.

“Yes, hello, Detective Keen. It’s Leonard Fenwick. I believe that I remembered something I failed to tell you when you came to visit this morning. Would you be available tomorrow to talk to me?” He almost sounded uncertain, like his pride was on the line if she didn’t accept.

Heart starting to jog, she rummaged for a free scrap of paper on her desk, a small rain of post-its and paper clips falling onto the floor as Liz shoved files and papers aside. “Yes, of course Mr. Fenwick! Would tomorrow at 10 AM be all right, or would a different time work better for you?”

“10 would be perfect, thank you. Just come back to my apartment and we’ll talk,” he said, voice resuming the confidence she’d heard when she’d visited him earlier.

On a blank post-it, she scrawled, _Talk to Fenwick @ 10_. “Sure, that sounds fine. Do you want to just talk to me, or would you like Reddington to come as well?”

She needed to know for certain exactly what Fenwick wanted and expected. As a very particular man, it was unlikely that he would talk if she sprung any surprises on him.

“No, just you,” Fenwick said.

She waited a few seconds for him to add more caveats or stipulations to their meeting, but none came. There was just the sound of Fenwick’s breath on the other end.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

She jumped in her seat, hoping that her little pause hadn’t made him start rethinking the meeting for some reason. “Yes! Sorry, I was just writing down a reminder about our meeting. Thank you very much for contacting me about your additional information, I greatly appreciate it. Other people might not have done so.”

A little flattery wasn’t going to hurt anything, she thought. In fact, it might help. She wrote down another note to herself underneath the first one that said, _No Red_.

“I’m sure, but I don’t do things many other people do,” Fenwick said, sounding quite pleased with himself. “I’ll let you go now, Detective Keen. I’m sure you have important things you’re doing, and I wouldn’t want to keep you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

Liz opened her mouth to say goodbye, but the phone clicked off before she could. Well, it seemed that Fenwick wanted to arrange the meetings and end the call on his own terms. Even though he was playing into her manipulation, he still wanted to maintain some control over the situation, and she would let him. If he thought he was in control, he’d be more likely to work with her.

Her first thought was that Red needed to know about this, even if he wasn’t going to be there at the meeting. Regardless of that, it was pertinent to keep her partner updated on any new developments in the case, she told herself. But there was more to her urge than the logic of it. Wanting him to be the first to know something—important to the case or not—was just a gut instinct, like second nature, even with the distance.

Maybe this would do something to close the distance, if only a little. It didn’t mean that she was forgiving him yet, but she needed to do something to make herself feel less uneasy about their partnership. If she felt off balance, then it would be easy to make a mistake over the course of the investigation, and she couldn’t afford any mistakes, not when she felt as if the end was in sight.

She stood from her chair, hands splayed on the surface of her desk as she scanned the floor for Red. All she saw were younger detectives with their heads down, scribbling something with urgency, talking into their phones, or a few staring at their computers with great concentration. There wasn’t the black flash of his jacket or hat coming in the entrance, or sliding along the far wall of the homicide department. When they’d gotten back from Fenwick’s, he’d left without telling her where he was going, and she hadn’t questioned it. She had no need of him at the moment, and both of them were having a difficult time being around each other. She understood the need for space. She wasn’t going to question it or intrude.

Liz worried her bottom lip, fingers drumming on the desk while she tried to figure out whether to give him a call that he might ignore, or whether to figure out where he might have gone to. Her hand started to go to her cell phone in her pocket when she spotted Ressler across the room headed for the exit. He and Red might not have liked each other much anymore, but that didn’t mean they ignored each other. Dislike could often mean that you were hyper aware of another person’s presence, and it also meant you might keep track of them to know where to avoid them.

She left her desk and headed towards Ressler, a smile plastered to her face as she planted herself in front of him. He took a step back when he saw her, surprise flickering across his face until his brow furrowed.

“…Yes, Keen?”

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head, feigning embarrassment, “but I have something important I need to tell Reddington, and I was wondering if you know where he might’ve gone to?”

Ressler snorted, hands on his hips. “You think I keep tabs on him?”

Well, she had to herself admit maybe her tactic had been flawed, but she wasn’t giving up yet. “No, I just thought you might’ve passed each other on the way out or something, but if—”

He sighed. “I think I saw him headed to the men’s locker room.”

Perhaps it was mostly Ressler’s desire to get to wherever he was going that got him to tell her, but she was nevertheless pleased with herself. She smiled even more widely at him (she thought she was becoming quite proficient in fake smiling), said a quick, “Thanks,” before heading off in the direction of the men’s locker room. Certainly could’ve waited for him to get back to the desk, but she didn’t know when that would be, and there was always the possibility that if he was in a gloomy enough mood he would avoid the desk altogether and leave without stopping by. It was best to just get it over with. As she reached the entrance to the men’s locker room and wandered into the first row of lockers, she wondered if he would be displeased on her walking up on him like this, or—

She stopped as she rounded the corner, coming up on the next row of lockers. Unconsciously, one hand went to the scar across her wrist, tracing the pattern of it, as if she was feeling sympathetic pain.

Several feet away, Red stood with his bare back to her, head lowered as he looked down at something in his hands. His back was covered in an agonizing pattern of raised ripples and ridges, the skin warped and red as if it had been frozen while it boiled under the intensity of the heat that had caused those scars.

What he’d said the day before about sometimes keeping secrets for the sake of other people and yourself—

Liz thought she was starting to understand.

He reached inside his locker, the plane of his scars shifting with the movement of his muscles. He pulled a white tank top out of the locker and pulled it on slowly, wearily, as if it was an obligation. She only cleared her throat once the tank top had had been on for several seconds. Let him think for a little while that she hadn’t seen. She would allow him the bliss of ignorance for a little longer.

When he whirled around, she saw the panic glinting in the green of his eyes, like he was a spooked animal ready to bolt. She could almost see the thoughts running frenzied through his mind: _Did she see? Does she know? Does she hate me even more now_?

She glanced away, leaving him some amount of privacy she hadn’t afforded him seconds ago. “Sorry, I just needed to tell you something really important, and I had no idea where you went.”

Her eyes flicked back up and she caught up running a hand over his bare upper arm—a self conscious gesture?--, fingers flexing into his skin before dropping his hand. “Okay. Just give me a minute to finish up in here and we can talk at the desk.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding with a gentle smile.

* * *

When he sat down in the chair, he felt like she was scrutinizing his every move, his every flaw, looking for any clue that might reveal the truth of his old injury. The conversation about it was no doubt coming. Much as she avoided discussing her feelings at times, Lizzie did not let go of important information when she latched onto it. Every tug to try to resist discussing it would only make her sink her teeth in deeper.

And he knew she’d seen. When she spoke to him, he knew the moment he looked into her eyes—that mix of pity and questioning—she knew. It wouldn’t be hard for her to connect the fact that the ‘78 fire of her childhood and those scars were linked somehow.

Red laced his fingers in his lap and exhaled, smiling stiffly at her. “You needed to tell me something, I believe?”

“Yeah,” she said, reaching over to feel around on her side of the desk until she pulled up a green post-it. How she knew where anything on her desk was amongst the mess, he had not the faintest.

“Fenwick called me while you were gone, and he wanted to arrange a meeting with me at 10 tomorrow at his place to discuss something he just “happened” to remember.” Lizzie rolled her eyes and shook her head.

He laughed at the gesture. Even with the heavy heart he’d been carrying inside for the past few days, he couldn’t help but find her exasperation endearing. “How very convenient of him. Am I invited to this get together?”

“No. Fenwick requested that he meet with me alone,” she said, turning around the post-it, to show the words _Talk to Fenwick @ 10_ , and, _No Red_. Even though he very well knew the last two words were only referring to the meeting, the sight of them still sent a pang through his chest.

“Do you think you’ll need to manipulate him into giving him what you want, or do you think he’ll talk without much coercion?”

She lifted the side of her mouth. “If he took the trouble of calling me, I don’t think he’s just having me go over so he can give more non answers. I mean--suppose that’s not impossible. If he did that, to him it might make him feel powerful that he got a cop to leave an important investigation to waste their time at his place, but he seems more the type that wants to prove that he’s right. Control didn’t strike me as his dominant trait.”

“No,” Red said, shaking his head. “Control is only a byproduct of his arrogant nature. Let him think things are going in his favor, and he’ll probably spill it all.”

“That’s what I’m planning on doing.” She put the post-it back down.

He tapped a thumb against the back of his hand. “Good.”

Her eyes dropped and her jaw worked, like she was about to make a difficult decision. He wanted to make an excuse and leave, but he wouldn’t. He’d done cowardly things before, and leaving would only make the distance between them even greater. Even if it wasn’t possible to fully mend the cracks in their relationship, perhaps something could be salvaged.

“Red, I think we need to talk. Not about this, not about the case. About…the fire and some of the other things you kept from me,” Lizzie said, her eyes finally lifting, bright with determination.

His insides twisted. She already knew more about his past and his mistakes than he let most people know, but he didn’t relish the idea of her having the complete picture of what he was: a failure of a man. Maybe she already knew that, but after he told her…everything, then the picture would be even clearer, like adjusting the picture on an old TV set. She already knew the general shape of the thing, but with the adjustment, she would see every last detail and just how unsavory and ugly it was.

Pressing his fingers together, he inhaled. “All right. We can do that, but not at the desk.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Let’s go to the cold case room. No one will bother us there.”

* * *

There was something ridiculous about coming down into the cold case room, like they were spies and had to discuss something secret and subversive out of the hearing of their superiors. Or like they were coming down here for a secret liaison—

Even Red knew the last thought had been entirely inappropriate, given the nature of the forthcoming conversation, to say nothing of how badly damaged their partnership had become. But his attraction to her—his feelings for her—were fixed, refusing to waver or change, even now. He had not quite experienced anything like it before.

Lizzie settled back against the wall, arms crossed, looking at him with…what? He couldn’t read the emotion in her eyes, and it wasn’t just because of the dim lighting down in the cold case room. She was learning how to disguise her emotions from him. (And hadn't she learned from the best? From a man who daily hid his feelings from others?)

“I wouldn’t ask about this if I didn’t think it wasn’t relevant,” she said, voice careful.

There was that pity again, and it made him want to look away. He didn’t want that pity, not if it meant she was looking at him like some poor, broken thing.

“I get that there are things that are extremely personal to you, but I have the feeling that this relates to something extremely personal to me as well.” She swallowed so hard it looked like it might hurt. “Those scars on your back—do they have something with the fire from when I was a child?”

His muscles tensed in response to the question, a fight or flight response that he wasn’t going to listen to. Could he lie? Of course. But that would be breaking the agreement with himself. He would tell her what she needed to know, no matter the damage to himself.

He had to take in a short, sharp breath. “Yes,” he said.

Lizzie’s eyes flickered closed, fingers tightening on her arm. Was that not what she wanted to hear? Was the answer somehow once again dredging up the past for her? If it was, he understood. The fact that the specter of the arsonist  had been haunting both them for the past few days meant that he had had a nightmare last night (during the few hours he had slept), about heat and peeling skin and smoldering bone. He’d awoken shivering and sweating, head thick and pounding with the after effects of too much alcohol.

“Is that one of the reasons that you kept putting off telling me about looking into my past? Because it had something to do with you?” Her eyes finally opened, the rims of them wet.

Yes, she’d been seeing the same things he had last night in his dreams. He hated that he had caused this. “That’s correct,” he said, jerking his head on a nod.

She raked a hand through her hair, and for a moment she looked like a distraught spirit standing there in a dim ray of light, pale and mournful, searching for answers among dusty old police reports. “You told me that you discovered a possible suspect that might have caused the fire from my childhood. Tell me who they are, how you know about them, how…all of this is connected to you.”

Red dropped his eyes, glancing around for a chair, but there was none. It wasn’t as if he was a weak kneed, but he still would’ve preferred having something to steady himself. His body was feeling heavy and so, so tired. And perhaps Lizzie saw that, because she took a step forward and took his hands in hers, making the nerves in his hands sing. For one moment, he was fourteen again and ridiculously giddy that his crush was holding his hand.

“We can sit down if you want,” she said, eyes soft. And—no, that wasn’t pity. It was kindness.

His mouth twitched in a smile as she lead them over to the wall and he sat down next to her, back pressed against the cold bricks, laying his stiff legs out in front of him. He rubbed his knee, hoping she wasn’t thinking that his age was showing.

He pressed the back of his head into the bricks, closing his eyes. “Years and years ago, I was handed an apparent arson for hire case. The victim was a known drug dealer that was starting into edge into other dealers’ territory, so we thought it likely one of his competitors put a hit out on him. We built a profile on the arsonist, but we never did figure out who he was. There were three other arson for hire cases with a similar pattern and similar evidence: a homemade gas can with a distinctive _S_   mark in the side of it.”

He opened his eyes and rolled his head to the side, looking over at Lizzie to see if that bit of news had effected her. She was staring straight ahead, jaw clenched hard, eyes distant, hands clutching each other. That expression was so much like the detached, lost expression she wore as a child in the newspaper clipping that he felt his heart break. He reached out and pressed one hand against hers.

She didn’t pull away.

“We got an anonymous tip about the next place that the arsonist might attack—a hideout of another drug dealer. I went in there, but the dealer wasn’t in there, and at first I didn’t think the arsonist was either, but—” his voice caught in his throat, almost like he couldn’t will himself to say the next words. Lizzie squeezed his hand, and the knowledge that they were reliving similar traumas at that moment bolstered him enough to continue

“The arsonist set the building on fire with me in it and a beam fell partially on me. My back,” he waved his free hand towards his shoulders, “well, you know about that. I was laid up in the hospital for a week, and after that they took me off the arsonist case and tried to put me on desk duty for awhile until I healed, but I wasn’t going to be having that.”

She laughed quietly. “You’re stubborn and obnoxious now, I can’t imagine what younger Detective Reddington was like.”

He shook his head and raised his eyebrows. “He was probably exactly as bad as you imagine him—or worse. I tried to pursue and investigate the case on my own, but nothing ever surfaced again. It was like the arsonist just disappeared. I thought maybe he went somewhere else, or maybe he ended up accidentally killing himself in one of his fires.”

He shrugged. He’d gone over the possibilities so many times they almost held no meaning anymore. “I don’t know. I didn’t think about the case for so long, but then I looked up the fire from when you were a child and, Lizzie—I swear, I would have stopped and left it there if I hadn’t thought there was some connection to my serial arsonist. I’m sorry, I—”

He shut his jaw with a click. The beginnings of an apology had just started spilling out of him, jumbled and inelegant. She didn’t need to hear his excuses and justifications right now. “But I did continue, as you know. The similarities between the ‘78 fire and the arson for hire cases were so similar: the homemade gas can and the stamp in it. Even the victim profile. The Rostovs were rumored to have started associating with drug runners, though they were never investigated.”

He winced. No child wanted to hear that their possibly murdered parents might have also been involved in drug running, even if it was only to make money for survival. “I’m sorry—”

She shook her head, shoulders slumped. “No, it’s okay. I wanted you to tell me everything, and you are. I don’t think everything has quite processed yet. I’m just…listening right now.”

He ran his thumb over her tightly laced hands. “And I’ve told you what I know. I suspected the ‘78 fire might have been an early crime of the arsonist, given how the evidence was similar, but cruder. I have no way of knowing for certain if the same man that injured me killed your parents, and I doubt we’ll know for certain, but that’s all of it. Except—”

“I am sorry. I should have told you that I was looking into your past earlier. You deserved to know.”

Lizzie scooted closer to him so her hip was pressed against his. His heart beat faster, and he thought it might give out when she reached up to touch his cheek to guide her face so that he was looking at her. “Yeah, you should’ve told me earlier, but you told me everything now. You could’ve evaded and refused to tell me, but you didn’t.”

“It wouldn’t have been right to evade,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

“I know. And…I know you try to do what you thing is correct, even when it doesn’t end up being right." She sighed, eyes so clear and tender.

"You think you’re really screwed up, don’t you?” She ran her thumb over his cheek.

He couldn’t breathe or think of an answer to that question. The only thing he could think was: _She doesn’t hate me_ and, _Lizzie is touching my cheek_.

“You’ve made a lot of mistakes, but you’re still a good person. And, look, I’m sorry too. We should’ve talked this over earlier instead of circling and ignoring the issue. We both handled this wrong.” She pulled her hand away, and when she did, he realized he didn’t want that to be the last time she touched his face.

He cleared his throat, not trusting himself to speak unless he did so. “Yes, but I was the one most in the wrong.”

Lizzie ran a hand over her face. “It’s not going to help anything to measure who is more wrong, Red.”

He kept his eyes on her, unblinking. Even thought she often seemed to find it unsettling when he stared at her with intensity, she didn’t drop her eyes. “Perhaps not,” he said, voice low.

“Do you think we can try to go back to where we were before? I mean, I know things won’t exactly be the same, but I want to work closely again without things being…” she wiggled her fingers, as if that motion indicated the indefinable problems that had been simmering between them.

He wiggled his fingers back at her, unable to keep himself from slipping back into their usual teasing. “I think we can avoid that,” he said.

She tried to swat his hand, but he pulled it away before she could. “You know what I mean,” she said, nose wrinkled.

“I just…” her voice became weary again. “I want my friend back.”

With that, he couldn’t stop himself from shifting and pulling her against him, gathering her against his chest and pressing a kiss to her hair. The strength with which she hugged him back surprised him. It almost made his ribs ache, but he didn’t care, because it felt like she was trying to pull him as close as possible to her, like she didn’t want to be separated again, and if she was, some part of her would start to bleed.

“I will be your friend as long as you want me to be,” he said, voice rough, and he felt the words vibrate between them.

“Thank you,” she said, her mouth against his neck, and it took all his will power not to shiver at the sensation of her lips against his skin.

 _You have nothing to thank me for_ , he wanted to say. _I’m the one that should be endlessly thanking you for forgiving me, even when you had every right not to._

Instead, he just said, “Of course. Always.”


	31. Chapter 31

“Ah, Detective Keen! I’m pleased to see that you’re here on time.” Fenwick peered at her from the doorway of his apartment, hair smoothed, glasses pushed up to the bridge of his nose—looking altogether more collected than when she had Red had visited him yesterday.

“You didn’t think I would be?” She hoped that he wasn’t showing doubt in her trustworthiness. If he was, then this visit to his place might be for nothing.

“I didn’t think that _you_ specifically wouldn’t be on time. I just have the notion that law enforcement likes to force civilians to do things when it’s convenient for them, not for the civilians, so I’m pleased to see that you aren’t that way.” Fenwick stepped back from the door and inclined his head, glancing from her to the inside of his apartment. “Come in, then.”

Liz gave him a smile and a nod, then stepped over the threshold, surveying the man’s apartment to see if it could tell her anything about his current state of mind. When she started towards the living room, she saw that it was more polished and neat than yesterday, just as Fenwick’s personal appearance was. The guts of the typewriter-computer weren’t spread across the coffee table, and little wires weren’t laying across the sofa, ready to jab into her thigh. The sofa seemed to be artfully arranged as if it had been prepared to be photographed for a furniture catalog. Pillows lay at a pleasing angle at either end of the sofa, and there wasn’t a hair or a crumb on the cushions. It seemed that Fenwick was trying to make up for the last less than tidy first impression he’d made on her.

She perched on the left end of the couch while Fenwick settled back onto the right end of it, one arm laying across the back of the couch. He was displaying his comfort here, claiming that it was his territory. She pulled out her notebook and lay a pen on the cover of it, making sure not to start idly tapping it.

“Again, thank you for inviting me here to discuss Egan with me. You said that you remembered some pertinent information?” She didn’t make a move to open her notebook up yet.

Fenwick didn’t say anything. He just glanced down to her bandaged hand and his lips tightened. She resisted curling her fingers over her palm so she didn’t draw more attention to the wound. Did he know, just like Zabik had?

“This is personal for you, isn’t it?” He lifted his eyes from the bandage, head cocked to the side. The movement reminded her of Red, but when Fenwick did it, it just seemed calculating, not curious.

“It is personal for me in that I personally want to catch a criminal that is out in the community who potentially poses a threat to innocents,” she said, voice cool.

Fenwick rolled his eyes and snorted, shaking his head. “You can deflect if you want, Detective Keen, but you’ve got a drive in you to catch him that’s much more than a detached desire to put away a criminal.”

His cool eyes took her in, like he was taking apart her psyche in his mind, just like he took apart those machines. “I know Egan is dangerous, but he usually doesn’t show it. It’s usually only if you press him, or if you pay him to do it. Is that what happened? You almost got him and he knifed you?”

Liz was not going to be let it be said she made the same exact mistake twice. She had confronted this situation before with Zabik, and she wasn’t going to let this middle aged ex-burglar rattle her. She wouldn’t wrestle all the control away from him, but he had to know she wasn’t easily pushed around.

Raising her hand, she showed him the bandaged palm, plain white gauze disguising the pink, healing gash in her skin. “Okay, in the spirit of us both disclosing what we know: yes, Egan injured me. So perhaps my motivation to catch him is more personal than it has been with other criminals.”

“Honesty isn’t common either in law enforcement, I find,” Fenwick said, talking to her palm, not her face.

She withdrew her hand put kept it on her lap in plain sight, not hiding it away as if was a weakness. “Well, I don’t find that ex-cons are particularly honest either, so I guess we’re proving each other wrong today.”

Fenwick’s mouth curled at the edges, eyebrows raising. “Well, then. You’re not as prim and professional as I thought you were.”

“I strive to be professional, Mr. Fenwick, but never prim.” She smiled at him then, lips pulled back from teeth, tight and proper—like a reminder that she might be a well behaved creature, but she still had teeth. Fenwick was testing her, trying to see how she would respond to prods against her job and against her character. Fenwick didn’t know she’d been partnered with and had effectively won over someone who had initially made it his goal to criticize her.

“So I see.” Fenwick slid his arm off the back of the couch and leaned towards her. “Let’s get to business, then.”

It seemed she had passed whatever test it was. Pleased, she closed her mouth and opened up the notebook. “Yes, let’s.”

* * *

The hair along her neck stood straight up, even though there was little chance Egan was still in the apartment building. But the memory of him slamming into her, poising the tip of the knife on her stomach, ready to slice her apart like game sang in her veins, her body somehow knowing that she was stepping into the territory of something that had tried to rip the life out of her.

Somehow, Red seemed to know her nerves were alight inside her (and didn’t he always know when something was wrong?), because touched her shoulder, steeling her. She exhaled, pulling disposable gloves out of her pocket along with the building’s master key that the superintendent had given them.

She rapped her knuckles lightly on the door. “Sanford Egan, it’s the MPD.”

She pressed her ear to the door, straining to hear any noise beyond the wooden barrier, but there was nothing, not even the slightest creak of wood.

She knocked one more time, harder, jaw set. “Mr. Egan, if you’re in there, open the door!”

In a nearby apartment, someone coughed, making the muscles in her back flinch, but there was still no response behind the door. As they’d suspected, Egan probably wasn’t home. Fenwick had said as much—after Egan came poking around, insinuating that he wanted a favor from Fenwick, he’d had a friend of his surveil Egan to track his movements and discover where he lived. If Egan was responsible for one murder and one attempted one, the last thing he would want was someone following him around. No, he’d probably abandoned the apartment recently, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t left anything useful behind.

Taking the key between her fingers, she pressed it into the keyhole, door unlocking with little jiggling or effort on her part. Liz pushed her jacket aside to unholster her gun just in case Egan was in the apartment, lying in wait in the darkness. How ironic would it be if she avoided getting slit open by him in the park, only to be taken out by a bullet?

Incredibly ironic, she thought.

She pushed the door open with the toe of her shoe, and it coasted open to reveal a darkened room turned alien and strange by the blackness, lumps of furniture turned hunching and ominous. Behind her, Red clicked om a flashlight and pointed it into the room, the circle of light dancing across the far wall and sweeping over the floors and furniture. She took a step across the threshold, hands firm on her gun.

“Sanford Egan?” she called out one last time as the flashlight jumped across the room like a searchlight.

After taking a few more steps, she spotted the outline of a light switch on the wall. She flicked it on with one finger, and as dim light flooded the room, the apartment became less foreboding, the unknown black lumps on the floor turned into papers and chairs. Her shoulders slumped and she holstered her gun.

“You want to split up or search the place together?” She turned to Red as he came around her side.

Red nudged at a stack of papers with his toe, lips pursed. “It’s not a big apartment, but we’ll get this over with more quickly if we split up.”

He knelt down and started flipping through the stack of papers that he had seemed curious about. Since it seemed he was already starting in on the living room, she decided that the bedroom would be the next best place to search. If there was forensic evidence to be found, it was most likely to be in there on the clothes.

She took a step back, readjusting her gloves. “If this were a horror film, us splitting up would lead to the killer jumping out of the closet and strangling me or something.”

Red raised his head from where he was kneeling. “Nonsense, Lizzie. I would be the first one killed in this scenario. I’m—what? Smug and overconfident? Those are the character archetypes that directors love offing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I’d put up a valiant fight, but the writers would adhere to time honored horror cliches and would kill me.”

He placed a paper on the floor beside himself. “You, on the other hand, would be the only character that survives at the end.”

“I would be the Final Girl, huh?” She raised her eyebrows. Maybe talking about hypothetically getting murdered while they were standing in the apartment of a real murderer was just baiting fate, but she couldn’t help herself. This comfortable banter with Red was one of the things she’d been missing the most.

“Is that a general term or a reference to something I don’t understand?” He squinted up at her.

She shook her head, a smile creeping across her face. “Don’t worry about it finish searching the killer’s papers, okay?”

“Certainly, sweetheart.”

Liz knew he was perhaps being sarcastic with that remark—or sarcastically fond?—but the way he said it…she shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to be getting distracted by emotions. In fact, it was the least opportune time in the world to be distracted by her emotions. She was possibly standing in an apartment filled with evidence, and she needed to focus on that right now, nothing else.

She turned away from Red sorting through the papers and headed down the hallway toward the bedroom.

* * *

It always felt slightly odd to sort through someone’s personal belongings, whether they were a victim or a suspected criminal. It was even odder when she was searching through someone’s bedroom--one of the most private spaces that a person had. As she looked through Egan’s things, she had continued to build up a profile of him. The clothes that he owned were taken care of, but they weren’t distinguishing in anyway—just generic T-shirts and a few polo shorts, mostly in solid colors, like black and blue.

His simple wardrobe didn’t mean he wasn’t materialistic at all, it just meant he didn’t place much importance on standing out, which made sense, given his crimes. She was starting to give up the idea of finding anything useful in his closet or drawers until she started unpacking the bottom drawer and found something dark crammed in the corner of it.

It was two, black, crumpled things, like a bat had crawled into the drawer and died with its wings wrapped over itself. She reached for the objects, pushing aside a pair of white socks with dirtied soles. The two black things were a pair of gloves, like the ones he’d been wearing the morning Egan had tried to murder her. She picked up one glove and held it up, pinched between two fingers, danging in front of her eyes. There weren’t any flecks of blood she could see, but perhaps the lab would find some.

Or perhaps these were the gloves Egan had been wearing when he’d murdered Beck. She and Red had speculated that the murderer was wearing gloves, since there were no fingerprints left at the scene, nor was there evidence of the scene being wiped down. Had he used the same gloves for Beck’s murder _and_ her attack?

She rose and bagged the gloves, placing them on the edge of the bed. If they were lucky, there would be gun powder residue or blood on the gloves. If they were incredibly lucky (which wasn’t likely, given how her life had panned out so far), the lab would find both. She started to shuffle back to the open drawer to see if there was anything else left in there when her foot bumped against something sticking out from beneath the bed. Perhaps it was the discussion she’d had with Red a few minutes ago that had prepared her to think it, but for a second she imagined that Egan was hiding under the bed and she’d bumped against his hand, and he was about to grab her ankle and wrestle her to the floor.

She shook herself, exhaling. That was unlikely, and besides that, Egan was just a man. The fact that he’d tried to kill her didn’t change that. He wasn’t a bogeyman, he was just a criminal. A criminal that she would catch.

She stepped back and saw the thing she’d bumped into was the tip of a shoe ticking out from under the bed. Liz leaned down and lifted up the blanket that obscured her view of the rest of the shoe and saw that there was a second beside the first one. And there was something on the toes of the shoes.

They were small, rusty flecks dotting the black surface of the shoes. She was no forensic analyst so she had no professional opinion whether it was blood or just dirt, but in her informal opinion as someone that had seen dried blood before? Those specks weren’t just dirt. But if the specks were blood, why would Egan keep something so incriminating? He’d been so careful not to leave evidence at Beck’s murder scene, and the murder weapon was nowhere to be found. So why keep the shoes?

They weren’t a trophy, because they weren’t Beck’s. He’d been found with his shoes on. Maybe…maybe this was his little materialistic weakness—shoes. The shirts weren’t nice, but the shoes were. They almost looked like something Red would enjoy wearing, which meant that they were fashionable and not cheap. Maybe Egan was just too attached and proud of the shoes to get rid of them, and figured that it wouldn’t hurt to just keep _these_. After all, he’d gotten rid of everything else. What would shoes hurt?

She’d often found that she arrogance of criminals shouldn’t be underestimated.

—

They’d handed the shoes, gloves off to forensics who were in the process of continuing to come through the apartment for anymore evidence. Red had also found a laptop that would be sent over to Tech to see if there was anything on it referring to Beck’s murder or to the attempt on her life. Their job done, she now sat on the edge of the hood of Red’s car, breeze pushing loose hair into her eyes. She and Red just wordlessly looked at each other for a few moments, not wanting or needing to say anything. After the tension over the past few days, relaxed silence was nice. It was a silence of understanding, not of avoidance or misery.

But even then, it seemed Red couldn’t keep quiet for long. He craned his neck up to the apartment building, like he could see what forensics was doing back in Egan’s apartment. Even if he’d had good eyesight, he wouldn’t have been able to see.

“I’d say we did pretty well, all things considered.” He lowered his head and looked back at her, giving a tentative smile.

“Yeah, except we didn’t find the murder weapon,” she sighed. It wasn’t that she’d realistically expected to find it. After all these weeks, there was little doubt Egan would’ve dumped it somewhere besides the apartment, but not having the murder weapon would make convicting Egan that much harder, even if the blood matched Beck’s. She just had to hope there was something on that computer.

Red walked over to her and leaned against the edge of the car beside her, hands spread out over the hood. “You have to take solace in the small victories. There are very few perfect cases, this one especially. But we were lost and in the dark at the beginning of this, now we know who our victim is and who our most likely suspect is. At various points in this investigation, I wasn’t certain we’d get either of those things. Try to take satisfaction in what we have done.”

She licked her lips and glanced up at him, squinting against the setting sun sending pricks of light into her eyes. “Who told you you can start giving me advice again?”

His eyes narrowed, flicking over her face as he seemed to mull over her words. She realized that maybe she needed to be careful with what she said over the next few days—they might have forgiven each other, but that trepidation hadn’t completely gone away. She leaned over and bumped her shoulder with his, reassuring him with a smile that he hadn’t made her angry.

“I’m just teasing, Red. You haven’t forgotten what that is, have you?”

He chuckled, low and warm. “If I do forget what that is, please force me to file for retirement, because the loss of my humor would be the beginning of the end.”

“You know what else would be the beginning of the end?” she asked, tilting her head.

“You ceasing to be deadly serious in most instances?” Red raised his brows, hopeful that his guess was correct.

“Mmm…no. I was gonna say it’d be the end of the world if you refused an offer to go out to dinner, so prove me wrong and accept my offer,” Liz said, pulling away from the car, heading for the passenger’s side door.

“I do so love proving you wrong, so not accepting would be a grave error on my part.” He beat her to the car door and stood in front of it for a moment, then opened it up for her, nodding at the empty seat.

It seemed that even when accepting her offer, he still had to show her up, but she couldn’t find it within herself to feel annoyed. They were starting to settle back into their previous rhythm, though perhaps even more comfortable than it had been before, now with everything acknowledged between them. Well, _most_ things, she supposed. But she couldn’t hope for too much at once.

* * *

“I can’t believe that guy behind us. He just kept going on and on about Jean Paul Sartre and postmodern poetry or whatever while his buddies are just trying to have what sounded like a nice reunion together,” Liz laughed, stopping to lean against the wall of her apartment building. She snorted and covered her mouth, shaking her head. “And when he starts rambling about—”

“…The merits of existentialist off-off-off Broadway theater?’ ” Red interjected, pitching his voice up and trying to imitate the man’s indefinable accent.

She wrinkled her nose at the poor imitation of the man’s voice. Red was good at a lot of things, but he wasn’t going to win an award for his imitations, but that somehow made it even better. Reaching for the crook of his elbow, she kept walking towards her door at the end of the hallway. “I’m betting it took all your willpower not to turn around and make some sarcastic comment at him.”

He looked down at her, his mouth curling, like he was enjoying some private joke. “You’d be surprised just how strong my willpower can be. Besides, I hardly wanted to make a scene and embarrass you.”

With a snort she halted again, and he just stopped a few inches short of bumping into her. “And when did you start having qualms about what’s socially acceptable? Maybe I _should_ be worried about you.”

He patted her arm and began walking again, and she was forced to be tugged alongside him. “I assure you that I am fully competent,” Red said.

They soon stopped in front of her door and his arm loosened, letting her drop her arm and circle around so she stood in front of him, one shoulder leaning against the wall. She heaved a deep sigh, her arms crossed. Usually, she would’ve just said goodbye to him and headed inside, but the moment kept stretching out, and neither of them said anything.

“…I’m glad we grabbed some food together,” Liz said, almost wincing at how clumsy her words sounded. “I missed doing that.”

They hadn’t really talked about their discussion from yesterday, but she knew it wouldn’t be good to leave it unacknowledged, like so many other things between them. Much as she was loath to be vulnerable, they couldn’t push that conversation under the rug, especially since she had a feeling that Red might have let it drop if that’s what it seemed she wanted.

Something flickered in his eyes, and he stepped closer to her, thumb tapping against his wrist, as if he was trying to expend nervous energy. “I missed doing that too.”

She was about to step back on her heel, but his mouth was half-parted, like he wanted to say something else. His thumb tapped more rapidly against his wrist until he stopped it, pressing it into his skin. It was a tell, something he told her to try to avoid. It seemed even he hadn’t fully broken himself of all of his own tells.

He took a step closer to her and reached out, fingers brushing along her hair. “But more than that, I missed you, Lizzie. You were so distant, I—”

He sucked in a breath. “I just missed you.”

Red’s voice sounded so small, so uncertain…maybe even a little afraid. And she understood why, right in the marrow of her bones. Both of them put up walls and masks so easily, but deep, deep inside both of them, wrapped up tight, was a broken person frightened of someone else seeing just how ragged and mangled they really were. 

Maybe because she wanted him to know that she wasn’t repulsed by what she saw, or maybe just because she was tired of hiding it and not acting on what she felt, she closed the small space between them, put a hand on his arm, and pressed her lips against his. Immediately, his arm stiffened, and he didn’t kiss her back.

With that non-response, her rush of boldness started to recede, and she started kicking herself—why did she so often act before fully thinking out the consequences? What if this ruined the tentative peace that had started growing again between them? What if he didn’t see her that way at all and just viewed her as a colleague he deeply respected and cared for, but not—

The torrent of thoughts was ended when he pulled her against him, hands on her arms, kissing her with a desperation, his hands traveling from her arms to her hair, fingers tangling through her locks. Her arms went around his neck and she tried to press reassurance into every kiss, as if she could say, _It’s okay, this is real_ , simply through touch alone.

She was the first to pull away, and when she did, he let out a small sigh, as if in disappointment that the moment was over. She swallowed, running a hand through her now messy hair. “I—”

“I know, we have an early morning tomorrow. I’ll see you then.” His eyes flickered up to her and he smiled weakly. He turned around and hurried away before her buzzing mind could formulate any kind of a response.

Liz slumped back against the wall, reaching a hand up to touch her lips.

She wasn’t going to let this go unacknowledged. 


End file.
